By Raúl Gavarrette O.
The origins and history of the Nicaraguan Spanish language schools dates back to the 80´s during the Sandinista revolution. In the eighties this was an incipient language industry and it was not seen as a business activity. The way the first Spanish language school was launched and open to public did not have a commercial vision. The first Spanish language school that opened in Nicaragua was the NICA Spanish School. This language school started operation in 1983 in Estelí, a northern Nicaraguan province surrounded by cool mountains. Beverly Truman, a female American resident who lived in Estelí, was the pioneer in opening a Spanish language school in Nicaragua. She was aware of the importance and the need of having a practical Spanish language center in Nicaragua.
In the eighties Nicaragua was a symbol of Revolution and social changes in Latin America and this fact attracted charismatic people from all over the world. Large international brigades of volunteers organized themselves and came to this country to experience the historic changes and cooperate with the social process. One of the main purposes the Spanish school NICA has, was to teach some American volunteers who had fallen in love of the Sandinista revolution and came to Nicaragua to take part in many revolutionary tasks such as coffee picking, school building, electrical energy projects and many others. A graduate local teacher from Estelí, Egdelina Lanuza, was working with Beverly by that time. Egdelina was a very active woman involved in social service and she was a well-known person in Estelí. She was one of the first Spanish teachers as a second language in the Revolutionary Nicaragua.
In the 80´s, this private Spanish language school social initiative provided the local teachers a decent job and sat up the very early bases for the Spanish language school’s industry in Nicaragua. The school NICA trained its teachers on techniques how to teach non-Spanish speakers’ people from around the world not only Spanish but about the Nicaraguan culture, and the ideals of the revolutionary Sandinista process.
This first Spanish language school was a great success in the north of Nicaragua. By the same time the revolutionary government started organizing its own linguistic project to teach Spanish to all the non-Spanish speaker volunteers, working in various rural and urban projects in governmental institutions and ministries. This governmental initiative was named SPANISH SCHOOL CASA DEL ESPAÑOL and was located near the Plaza España in Managua. In the late eighties the Central American University (UCA, Universidad Centro Americana) opened another similar program managed by the University Language Department.
