I am willing to concede that I might be overthinking situations where "Spaniards" should be used instead of "the Spanish." Perhaps I was premature in citing a h

I am willing to concede that I might be overthinking situations where "Spaniards" should be used instead of "the Spanish." Perhaps I was premature in citing a half-remembered verbal tic without having an actual example handy. But there is neither need to be presumptuous nor offensive, nor officious, in your attempts to grasp at my meaning. Amusingly enough, in the process of trying to find an erroneous misuse of the terms, and striving in vain, I stumbled upon this article, which is about the complexity of "Spanish" as a transatlantic identity, when it conflates Latin American hispanics with actual immigrant Spaniards: > The most common adaptation my interviewees reported to deal with the automatic association of Spain with Latin America was for them to disassociate from using the term Spanish as their primary identifier with Anglo-Americans. Rather as Susana, a 25-year-old ESL student, quite vividly noted they had to actively try to reinforce their geographic connection to Europe: > Susana: >“I’m not Spanish, I’m from Spain.” I always say that. In fact, I say “I’m from Es-pain” because I cannot say the [English] “s.” And they say “Olé” and laugh. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332649218766388 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23326492187663... Though that, of course, is a different issue altogether! Edit: After having a think, I'd say that there have been instances where in actual conversation I've heard individual Spanish people referred to as "a Spanish" rather than "a Spaniard." Which, of course, is wrong. It does feel like the word Spaniard has a rather historical, almost literary, sheen, so you don't hear it used in everyday conversation often. And so colloquially speaking, people are more likely to default to incorrect uses of Spanish as a noun. But that might be a misconception I've picked up, I freely admit.