 It held official status for nearly half a millennium before being demoted as an optional language in 1987.However, Spanish still remained a very important language up until the mid-20th century but inauspicious circumstances resulted in its gradual decline over the decades.Today, despite groups rallying to revive the language and make it a compulsory subject in schools, it is rarely used in everyday life or official settings and is spoken by less than 0.5% of the population.