“Español Moderno” for Chinese: The Influence of Colonial Thought on Spanish-American Cultural Discourse

: During two years of analysis of thesis projects for the graduation of bachelor’s degree in spanish language, deficiencies have been found in the students of the Spanish faculty of Hebei International Studies University, China, to assume and reproduce the idea of Spanish America as a heterogeneous conglomerate, therefore it was determined to study the idea of cultural diversity disseminated by the books for the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language in China. In this case, the Español Moderno 1 Student's Book and the Español Moderno 1 Reading Books were selected because they are the most widely used in universities and constitute the first learning section. Software-assisted qualitative analysis was used, establishing a coding system for the cultural information that made it possible to identify the cultural information with which the idea of the Hispanic American subject and society is constructed. Together with the ethnographic work with the students, it was concluded that the cultural information is dispersed, incoherent and superficial. It offers a vision of Hispanic America equated to Spain, understanding this as a region of Christian society, Spanish-speaking population and Latin culture with peculiar details and touristic landscapes. The book offers an inconsistent cultural education environment, which puts students at risk of making cultural mistakes during immersion in any Spanish-speaking cultural context. The Hispanic American cultural reality needs to be presented in a respectful and accurate manner. This implies decolonizing the perception and understanding Hispanic America from Hispanic America and not through colonial filters that seek to perpetuate a constricted vision, fertilized by ethnocentric analysis and denial of reality.