The number of Spanish speakers worldwide
It's hard to get an exact figure on the number of people worldwide that can speak Spanish. What is clear is that Spanish is the main language spoken in Latin America and there are at least 300 million people who speak Spanish as a first language.
Once you count the people that speak Spanish as a second or third language then the number of Spanish speakers rises to somewhere about the 500 million mark, and this figure is steadily increasing with the growing popularity of Spanish in the USA and the increasing population of Latin America.
Now is a great time to learn Spanish!