TRANSLATION

Previous considerations
Historically, Spanish society and government have given scarcely attention to the
hispanics from the United States. This lack of relevance or presence from the
hispanics in the Spanish scenario is not a strange situation, and this is because until
recently their profile in the United States was relatively imprecise. The situation was
like this when even the United States Hispanics settlements, in significant quantity
(What Carlos Fuentes has called the silent reconquest), come from the last half
century. The perception and the scale of the Hispanics is changing during this last
decade. The re-election of Clinton (1996) is the date when the electoral analists
examine this collective with a better look, a group that before seemed not having any
relevance at all. Until this year it was considered as a negative reference during the
electoral campaigns, with promises of being hard and tough towards the Hispanic
immigrants, it was an attractive factor for the conservative republican voter. The
century and millennium change has transformed this apparent insignificance,
especially when the demographic census in 2000 show all their demographic,
sociologic, cultural, political and economic potential for the Spanish community, until
then being diminished. Roberto Suro, the director of the Pew Hispanic Centre, says
very explicitely that the Hispanics have gone from being a simple note on the foot
page to a paragraph, and they are in their way to become in a substantial chapter of
the contemporary history of the United States.
So, the hispanic world have been until few years ago a mistery that from Spain
nobody had the intention of evaluating it, because their identity was infravalued or
their previous existence was unknown as a group demographical and sociological
identifiable. In the same United States, until recently few decades, it was spoken of
Puertorriquenos, Cubans, Dominicans or Mexicans, mentioning the most known
origins.