More Spanish learn German

More Spanish students are learning German, according to the Goethe Institute of Madrid, an institution globally promoting German culture and language.

Registrations for German classes increased by 60% in 2012, on top of a 40% increase the year before, an Institute spokesman reported.

"Never before, has the German brand had such renown," Goethe Institute staffers told the Spanish edition of the online news portal The Huffington Post in March. German is offered to fewer than 1% of public school students in Spain, as compared to 86.2% studying English.

Currently, many Spaniards see Germany as a place where they can find work. Unemployment in Spain has reached 27.16%, compared to 6.8% in Germany, and 4.9% in Austria, according to Eurostat.

More than 100 million people in the EU have German as their native tongue, representing approximately 20% of Europe’s population.