The term “Buddhism in the West” can be rather misleading. Too often, this umbrella term denotes Buddhism in the Anglophone world—namely the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. But the West is not monolithic and there are other European languages and cultural complexes that are interacting with Buddhism. The sphere of Hispanophone Buddhism, from practitioners to scholars to interested seekers, is a rich, vibrant, and diverse world that has only barely begun to enter global awareness.

There are many reasons for the current embryonic state of Buddhism and Buddhist studies in Spain and Central and South America. Many of these are historical. Despite its conquests of Central and South America in the 15th and 16th centuries, as well as ruling the Philippines from 1565–1898, early modern Spain did not colonize any Buddhist-majority country, and therefore never took part in any effort to study Asia’s religious traditions via colonial administrators, traveling scholars, or state-supported archeologists.

In the field of education, the Church in Spain enforced much stricter policies than Catholic counterparts elsewhere. In one famous example, the Belgian academics Louis de La Vallée Poussin (1869–1938) and Étienne Lamotte (1903–83), were Buddhological experts, despite being Catholic and broadly anti-Buddhist.

The nation-states that emerged after the Spanish American wars of independence suffered growing pains and turmoil as they navigated the volatile world of the 19th century. Spain itself had been a declining imperial power since Napoleon, and Bourbon abdications, restorations, and ongoing civil strife led to the rise of Francisco Franco (1892–1975) in the 1930s, who instated a Fascist dictatorship in Spain until the 1970s.

Overall, the socio-cultural context in which Buddhism came into the Spanish-speaking consciousness is quite different to the experience of the British in India or the French in China. Until recently, there were no Spanish-written dictionaries or compendiums by Spanish counterparts to French Sinologists such as Édouard Chavannes (1865–1918) or Paul Pelliot (1878–1949), or archaeological surveys carried out by a Hispanic Aurel Stein. At the popular level, Spanish-speaking “adopters” who “went native” and converted to Buddhism were even rarer than American or British converts.

Academically, Buddhist studies in the Hispanophone world have lagged behind the Anglo-German, Francophone, Japanese, and Russian schools of Buddhist studies. The more mature schools of Buddhist studies developed throughout the 20th Century without significant Hispanophone contributions until well after Franco. Buddhist studies, overall, could be said to have been a subject historically formed in Euro-American universities, with Spanish contributions lacking.

Spain introduced a new constitution promoting freedom of religion in 1979. This was close to a full two centuries after William Jones (1746–94) of the Asiatic Society. Of course, there were communities and individuals doing their best before the death of Franco in 1975, but the time for true intellectual flourishing came well after Buddhist discourse outside of Asia had been firmly set by English-speaking countries.

As of now, the only website devoted to covering Buddhist developments in the Hispanophone world has been Buddhistdoor en Español (BDE). Buddhistdoor’s Spanish-language platform has been at the forefront of driving and shaping awareness about Buddhist developments in the Hispanophone regions for Spanish and non-Spanish readers alike. Since 2019, Barcelona-born Daniel Millet Gil, who earned his PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of Hong Kong, has been bringing together this very first online community of Hispanophone Buddhist writers. As such, it does not seem complacent to state that the content of Buddhistdoor en Español’s contributors and columnists constitute the most reliable resources concerning “Buddhica Hispanica.” 

What do we mean by “Buddhica Hispanica?” When we speak of geography, we are referring to the region of the Americas below the United States, from Central America to South America. We also mean Spain itself, although the European country is a fundamentally different society to its former colonial regions, just as those regions, now diverse and independent nation-states, are complex and culturally rich societies, distinct from one another.

Through translated features and an ongoing series of posts on BDG’s Tea House blog, we have been sharing, with the help of our friends at BDE, the wonders of the Hispanophone Buddhist world. We can discern the passion and fidelity to the Dharma in the teachings of the trailblazing masters of different traditions founding centers in those countries, many of them for the first time, to the sincere and supportive sanghas growing in unfamiliar places. We have been exploring the temples, monasteries, and stupas being built all over Central and South America, and conversing with the scholars helping Spanish readers catch up in understanding the Dharma.

In the contemporary world, the self-defined Buddhists within the Spanish-speaking population average a tiny 0.1 per cent of the population. Yet it is growing and, in an ironic sense, has plenty of room to innovate and develop, unlike the increasingly static Catholic practices that people of Hispanic heritage identify with culturally.

The Hispanophone world is undoubtedly one of the most important Buddhist “frontiers” that a religious publication needs to take very seriously. This is for the edification of not only Hispanophone readers, but for non-Spanish audiences and communities too.

For this purpose, our series of “Hispanophone Buddhism,” along with selected features from BDE is exploring topics raised by the Spanish website’s contributors—with links to the original Spanish-language articles—and contextualizing them in the broader world of Buddhism’s development in Spain or Latin America.

We have been traversing an immense geographic range in the Hispanic world. Our methodology is twofold. First, we invite respected authors and knowledgeable scholars to offer readers of Spanish a well-informed and balanced story of the development of Buddhism in the Hispanophone world. Our writers’ accomplishments and publications are compelling, all of whom have years of experience in their field. Many hold doctorates and are researching and teaching at universities. Some of our regular contributors include—and this is by no means exhaustive—Cuban writer and scholar Dr. Douglas Calvo Gaínza, Hispanic-Brazilian journalist Fina Iñiguez, Chile-based China and ecology scholar Dr. María Elvira Ríos Peñafiel, Mexican scholar Dr. Roberto Eduardo García Fernández, and many more.

Second, we use our sources on the ground and in our Buddhist networks to identify teachers who are making an impact in their communities. Some of these teachers, who could be monastic or lay, are themselves regular contributors. The gallery of these Dharma teachers is large and diverse, ranging from Zen teacher Maestro Denkō Mesa, whose is based in Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands, Argentine monk Venerable Karma Tenpa, and the US-based Bhante Sanathavihari. The traditions these masters encompass, from Theravada to Mahayana to Vajrayana, are as diverse as any Buddhist sphere, be it in traditionally Buddhist Asia or the English-speaking West.

Finally, the range of subjects covered on BDE is also impressive. Precisely because Buddhism is relatively new and fresh in the Latin American and Spanish worlds—even more so than Buddhism in the Anglophone West—there is considerable space for reporting on a wide range of interests, including popular culture, literature, and wider society.

For example, Dr. Millet is planning with writers a special issue about the fascinating intersection between Buddhism and Ibero-American literature, with the objective being to explore how Buddhist teachings and practices have influenced Spanish-speaking narratives and poetry, hence fostering an enriching spiritual and cultural dialogue. 

Dr. Millet also regularly collaborates with a Spanish organization called the Catalan Coordinator of Buddhist Entities, which organizes the biennial Buddhist Film Festival of Catalonia. This event enjoys the advisory involvement of the Buddhist Film Foundation (BFF), headed by Gaetano Maida. The success of the Catalonian film festival, which brings Buddhist cinematography and movies to a growing Spanish audience, indicates that the Spanish world, along with the Latin American countries, are witnessing a deepening influence of and interest in Buddhist arts and culture.

Karmic seeds are rarely grand or large at first, but over time they ripen and grow into a magnificent fruit. With this introductory article, we hope to offer a reminder of how potentially rich and limitless journalists’ coverage of the Hispanophone world can be. BDE is committed to impactful reporting on this frontier of the Dharma. Hispanophone Buddhist communities around the world deserve nothing less.

See more

Buddhistdoor en Español
«Documental: Albores del budismo en Cuba (versión subtitulada en inglés)»

Related blogs from BDG Tea House

Hispanophone Buddhism

Related blog posts from BDG Tea House

Bringing Buddhist-themed productions to Spanish society: The Buddhist Film Festival of Catalonia