THE White House website's page, Twitter account and Facebook site in Spanish have disappeared within two days of Republican leader Donald Trump being sworn in as president, despite the USA having more Spanish speakers in residence than the entire population of Spain.
Those who tried to enter Whitehouse.gov/espanol on Sunday found an error message in English reading, 'Sorry the page you're looking for can't be found'.
Opened just a few months after outgoing president Barack Obama got into power, the Spanish-language site has been deleted along with the Twitter account for the White House, @LaCasaBlanca, and the government residence's Facebook site in the language.
And the head of the Hispanic Press and Media department, Gabriela Chojkier, who worked for Obama's government, has not been replaced, leading to suspicions that this unit has also been eliminated.
Over 55 million people in the USA speak Spanish as a native language and many more as a second language.
Whilst the vast majority of native Spanish-speakers in the United States are Latin American – principally from Mexico, the island of Puerto Rico which is now officially a US State, and Cuba – a high number of expatriates from Spain also live there, a decision many took because their mother tongue was so prolific in the country.
Between 1912 and 1920, over 14,000 natives of the Valencia region alone emigrated to the USA for a better life, most of whom were from the northern part of the province of Alicante, and whose grandchildren and great-grandchildren now retain strong ties with both countries, whichever they now live in.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com