Spanish Grammar for the italians (1873-1915): the emigration as a reason for learning languages

Among European countries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century which brought major waves of emigration to Latin America we can count Italy among them. Coinciding with the period of maximum migration flows we find in the grammars of Spanish for Italians (1873-1915) numerous references to Latin America, to the phenomenon of migration itself and sometimes to the necessity of learning Spanish to travel to the new continent. And generally we find it in those parts of the book marginal to the metalinguistic text: prologues, prefaces, dedications, appendices, maps, etc. Regarding the linguistic variations that those Italian immigrants would find when arriving to the Spanish-speaking countries (Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico.) there are hardly any references in the grammatical text, demonstrating that the Spanish language taught in Italy at the time was only the peninsular standard. Also from our analysis of the methods and contents of such grammars we can assume that the intention was to teach a very practical Spanish and at times it would be more business and commerce oriented.