Ola, Abla Espa Spaniel. Today on Travel with Rick Steeves, Julie Barlow and Jean-Binwa

Naido explain how the Spanish language rose to global prominence starting with King Ferdinand.

This is a king who set out to make Spanish into something worthwhile to use.

The authors of the story of Spanish help us see the influence of Spain on who we are today

in North America. The entire cowboy culture in the United States

was actually created in Spain, in Spanish, by Mexicans.

We'll also get advice for enjoying Spain on a first-time visit.

A flamenco show is a good place to grasp the influences on Spanish history.

It's a mixture, a melting pot of all of this culture, so the flamenco is the summary of all of them.

Plus tips for seeing the amazing art collection at the Prado.

Goya is the perfect Spanish artist because he caught a time in Spain that was very turbulent.

We're discovering the romance of Spain and the Spanish language in the hour ahead.

It's Travel with Rick Steeves.

They'll tell us how Spanish has become one of the world's most spoken languages. That's in just a minute. A little later in the hour, Spanish

guides share tips to prepare you for your first trip to Spain and what to look

forward to that's going to be different from what you might expect back home.

With all the political wrangled... going to be different from what you might expect back home.

With all the political wrangling in the United States over its immigration policies concerning

people from south of the border, the nation's long and intimate relationship with its Spanish-speaking neighbors is often overlooked.

In fact, in the United States, we're already one of the top Spanish-speaking countries in the world.

So how in the first place did a dialect spoken by just a

handful of Shepherds up in northern Spain eventually become the world's

...