An estimated 50,000 Spanish students come to Ireland each year, continuing a tradition started 50 years ago, writes Brian Maye

Anyone who lives in Dublin, or in other Irish cities and towns, will know that during the summer large numbers of Spanish students come here to learn English. Articles appear in the newspapers from time to time portraying this annual visitation as an inconvenience and nuisance. But such articles tend to pander to prejudice.

It is very difficult to arrive at exact figures for the number of Spanish students who come here every year, but a number of surveys suggest that in recent times numbers are around 50,000. Apart from the money Irish families receive for hosting the students, Irish schools receive for providing classes for them and Dublin Bus receives for transporting them, if the students were each to spend €500 during their stays here - and, let's face it, it's not hard to spend €500 in Ireland - that's a welcome injection of €25 million into the economy every year.

Father Ramón Altabella is a Spanish Jesuit who began bringing students to Ireland to learn English 50 years ago this summer. Economic considerations are far from his mind as he talks about the enduring enterprise begun not long after he was ordained, in 1953.

His father provincial appointed him to St Ignatius High School in Barcelona as a history teacher. A group of young Jesuit colleagues there, having talked about a useful way of occupying their students' time during the summer months, came up with the idea of sending them abroad to learn English. (Already, in those years after the second World War, it was becoming apparent that English would be the international language.)

Would their students go to England or Ireland? They opted for Ireland for two reasons, one obvious enough (Ireland was a Catholic country), one not so obvious (they believed the English spoken in Ireland would be "purer", because England was already a multicultural and multiracial society).

Providentially (his own word), Father Altabella had a friend studying at Milltown Institute in Dublin, whom he asked for help in finding reliable Irish families for the Spanish students to stay with. Only boys were brought to Dublin at the beginning, 18 on that first visit. A daughter of one of the Irish host families was a teacher, and the boys went to her house and had class in the garden. That first, eight-week summer school was a great success, thanks especially to the Irish families, according to Father Altabella. For the second year up to 30 students made the trip from Spain.

When Father Altabella moved from Barcelona to his native Valencia his father rector there asked him to continue with his summer school. The Spanish families now also asked him to take girls, and the number of students continued to grow, peaking at 315 in the late 1960s. After that it steadied to a regular 200 a summer. Various Dublin schools have been used over the years, including Belvedere College, Gonzaga College, Stratford College and Coláiste Mhuire.

Apart from helping young Spaniards to learn English, the summer school has had some other happy outcomes. Father Altabella recalls a young man being sent out of class for playing the joker once too often. To atone, he presented his teacher with flowers and so began a romance that led to a Spanish-Irish wedding four years later. As well, a number of Spanish marriages resulted from first encounters in the summer-school classes.

The enterprise Father Altabella initiated half a century ago does not make a profit. He says he started it not to make money but to continue the inspiration of the Jesuit educational calling. Any surplus funds go to charities in South America, to the Valencia leper hospital in Fontilles and to help Jesuit student priests from developing countries.

But the greatest benefit Father Altabella sees from what he began cannot be measured in economic terms. What he is happiest about is that initial idea of entrusting Spanish students to Irish families. Both learn a lot about each other's cultures and psychology, and this mutual knowledge achieves far more than any political agreement could, he says.

Irish-Spanish connections have a long history, going back to the possible arrival of the first humans in Ireland from the Iberian peninsula. Many other links followed, and nothing has strengthened them more than the process that has gone on so strongly for 50 years thanks to the foresight of Father Altabella.