El Salvador
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94 free El Salvador trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
11 free El Salvador trivia questions with answers. Discover how much you know about El Salvador with our engaging trivia quiz. From its rich history and vibrant culture to stunning natural landmarks, this quiz covers essential facts about Central America's smallest country. Put your knowledge to the test and learn fascinating insights about El Salvador!
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Q 01Punta Roca and El Sunzal, in El Salvador's La Libertad department, are world-famous spots for which sport?
Surfing
Surfing is the coast's calling card: the government markets it as Surf City, and in 2021 El Sunzal co-hosted the ISA World Surfing Games, a qualifier for the sport's Olympic debut in Tokyo.
Q 02El Salvador shares its 15 September independence day with which of these countries?
Costa Rica
Costa Rica, like El Salvador and three more countries, dates its independence to the act signed in Guatemala City on 15 September 1821, so all five celebrate the same day.
Q 03Which colourful bird, known locally as the torogoz, is the national bird of El Salvador?
Turquoise-browed Motmot
The Turquoise-browed Motmot's local name torogoz imitates its call; it is also the national bird of Nicaragua, where it is the guardabarranco.
Q 04Which body of water borders El Salvador to the south?
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is El Salvador's only coast; it is the one Central American country with no Caribbean shoreline.
Q 05Which Salvadoran archbishop was assassinated at the altar in March 1980?
Óscar Romero
Óscar Romero was shot dead on 24 March 1980 while celebrating Mass in a hospital chapel, the day after a sermon in which he called on soldiers to stop carrying out the repression.
Q 06In 2001 El Salvador abandoned the colón in favour of which foreign currency?
US dollar
The US dollar took over from 1 January 2001 under the Monetary Integration Law; the colón was never abolished and is still legal tender, but it has vanished from everyday use.
Q 07Which crop made the fortunes of El Salvador's ruling elite, nicknamed the 'Fourteen Families'?
Coffee
Coffee built the oligarchy's wealth in the late 19th century, when one government after another backed taking land from villages and smallholders to turn it into coffee estates.
Q 08El Salvador's twelve-year civil war ended in January 1992 with peace accords signed in which foreign capital?
Mexico City
Mexico City's Chapultepec Castle hosted the signing on 16 January 1992 after UN-mediated talks; the FMLN guerrillas then laid down their arms and became a legal political party.
Q 09What is El Salvador's national dish, a thick corn griddle cake stuffed with cheese, beans or chicharron?
Pupusa
The pupusa left home with its people: refugees from the civil war of the 1980s began cooking it abroad, and pupuserías sprang up by the score in cities such as Los Angeles.
Q 10Which Salvadoran site, buried by ash around AD 600 and UNESCO-listed in 1993, is nicknamed the Pompeii of the Americas?
Joya de Ceren
Joya de Ceren was sealed under ash by the Loma Caldera eruption, but unlike Pompeii's townsfolk its villagers seem to have escaped: a small earthquake first gave them time to flee.
Q 11Ilamatepec, El Salvador's highest volcano at 2,381 metres, is better known by which name?
Santa Ana
Santa Ana last erupted on 1 October 2005, hurling car-sized rocks up to 1.5 kilometres, killing two people and forcing thousands of villagers to flee.
Q 12What is the affectionate nickname of El Salvador?
Pulgarcito de América
Pulgarcito de América, 'Tom Thumb of the Americas', is a nod to size: El Salvador is the smallest country on the American mainland, and also its most densely populated.
Q 13The Nahua-speaking Pipil people of El Salvador originally migrated from where?
Central Mexico
Q 21By what other name is the 1969 El Salvador–Honduras 'Football War' known?
The 100 Hour War
The 100 Hour War began on 14 July 1969 and ended with an OAS-brokered ceasefire on the night of 18 July, roughly 100 hours later; Salvadoran troops withdrew in early August.
Q 22The Football War got its nickname from rioting during a qualifier for which tournament?
The 1970 FIFA World Cup
The riots came at the June 1969 qualifiers for the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico; the deeper causes were Honduran land reform and some 300,000 Salvadoran migrants living in Honduras.
Q 23Which pope made El Salvador's assassinated archbishop a saint?
Francis
Central Mexico was the Pipil homeland: they are a Nahua people who moved south long before the Spanish arrived, which is why their Nawat language is a close cousin of the Aztecs' Nahuatl.
Q 14The Pipil called their territory Kuskatan, a Nawat word meaning what?
The Place of Precious Jewels
The Place of Precious Jewels is the usual gloss of Kuskatan, probably built on the Nawat kuskat, a jewel or necklace; the name lives on in Cuscatlán department and the capital's Estadio Cuscatlán.
Q 15Which conquistador led the first incursion into Cuzcatlan in June 1524?
Pedro de Alvarado
Pedro de Alvarado entered Cuzcatlan in June 1524 after the battle of Acajutla, where a Pipil arrow left him lame; he withdrew and left the conquest to his brother Gonzalo de Alvarado.
Q 16Which short-lived state briefly annexed El Salvador before it joined the Federal Republic of Central America in 1823?
The First Mexican Empire
The First Mexican Empire under Agustín de Iturbide annexed Central America in January 1822; Iturbide abdicated in March 1823 and the provinces declared their own independence that July.
Q 17Which natural dye crop was El Salvador's leading export in the late colonial era?
Indigo
Indigo, known locally as añil, dominated the economy until cheaper synthetic dyes developed in Germany wiped out its market.
Q 18The brutal 1932 suppression of a peasant revolt in western El Salvador is remembered by what name?
La Matanza
La Matanza, Spanish for 'the massacre', killed an estimated 10,000 to 40,000 people within weeks; the Pipil leader Feliciano Ama was among those hanged.
Q 19The Salvadoran Civil War's guerrilla coalition took its name from which revolutionary?
Farabundo Martí
Farabundo Martí, a communist organiser, was shot by firing squad on 1 February 1932 after the failed peasant rising; in 1980 five guerrilla groups united under his name as the FMLN.
Q 20By the UN's count, roughly how many people were killed in El Salvador's 1980–1992 civil war?
75,000
75,000 is the United Nations figure, with some 8,000 more disappeared; the 1992 peace accords that ended the war forced reforms on the army and brought the rebels into politics.
Francis declared the archbishop a martyr in 2015, which cleared the way for his beatification that May and for the canonisation in Rome in October 2018.
Q 24On 7 September 2021, El Salvador became the first country to adopt what as legal tender?
Bitcoin
Bitcoin became legal tender 90 days after the law was published, and a state wallet called Chivo launched the same day; lawmakers stripped that status again in early 2025.
Q 25Which global lender pressured El Salvador into removing the cryptocurrency's legal-tender status in 2025?
The International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund made scaling back the experiment part of a loan deal reached in December 2024, and within weeks lawmakers had stripped the coin's legal-tender status.
Q 26What was Nayib Bukele before becoming El Salvador's president?
Mayor of San Salvador
Mayor of San Salvador from 2015 to 2018, he won outright with about 53 per cent of the vote, ending three decades in which only two parties had held the presidency.
Q 27Why did Nayib Bukele step aside as El Salvador's president for six months from December 2023?
To run for re-election
To run for re-election: congress granted him six months' leave to campaign, and his private secretary, Claudia Rodríguez de Guevara, became the first woman to exercise the presidency.
Q 28El Salvador's former currency, the colón, was named after which historical figure?
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus is Cristóbal Colón in Spanish; an 1892 law renamed the peso in his honour, 400 years after his first voyage.
Q 29El Salvador's flag is a horizontal triband of which colours?
Blue-white-blue
The blue-white-blue triband copies the flag of the Federal Republic of Central America, itself modelled on Argentina's, with the national coat of arms on the central white band.
Q 30From 1865 to 1912, El Salvador's flag, with a red canton and alternating stripes, resembled which country's?
The United States
The United States inspired the design decreed by President Francisco Dueñas in 1865: a Stars and Stripes lookalike whose red canton held one white star for each department.