The Spanish spoken by Bubi and Fang of Equatorial Guinea. Evaluations from the Equatoguinean community in Madrid

Abstract

The Equatoguineans constitute a group of Spanish-speaking immigrants with a stable and long-lasting presence in the Autonomous Community of Madrid, with currently about 9.000 individuals. An
important characteristic of this group –and of the Equatoguinean society as a whole– are the internal ethnic differences, especially between Bubi and Fang. The Fang represent the most numerous ethnic group of Equatorial Guinea and hold the political power
since independence in 1968, whereas the Bubi are the biggest ethnic minority group.

In this article, we look at the criteria of ethnicity from a sociolinguistic point of view. More precisely, we study how the Equatoguineans in Madrid describe and value the Spanish spoken by their compatriots,
focusing especially on internal variations in the Spanish of Equatorial Guinea related to the speakers’ ethnic origin. Our corpus contains 24 semi-structured interviews that were conducted in 2017
and 2018 with Equatoguineans (Bubi and Fang) in Madrid.