Hispanic Culture
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
50 free Hispanic Culture trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hispanic culture spans some twenty countries, from the plazas of Spain to the Andes and the Caribbean, along with large communities across the United States. What ties it together is the Spanish language and a shared love of family, food, faith and celebration. Every country adds customs of its own, though, and many of the best-known traditions are not quite what outsiders assume. This quiz mixes tradition with pop culture. There are questions on holidays and festivals, childhood customs and superstitions, family names, famous dishes and drinks, and the words Spanish has borrowed and lent. You will also meet the painters, architects and novelists that every Spanish class talks about, alongside the singers, film-makers, TV shows and sporting heroes who have carried Hispanic culture around the world. It is written for students and teachers of Spanish, for Hispanic Heritage Month events, and for anyone who enjoys a good general-knowledge quiz. Most questions can be worked out with a little thought, a few are there to stretch the experts, and every answer comes with a short explanation. Play it on screen or print it for a classroom or a trivia night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Spain and Latin America, which animal collects children's lost teeth instead of the Tooth Fairy?
A mouse
A mouse called Ratoncito Pérez does the job, swapping the tooth under the pillow for a coin or small gift. The writer Luis Coloma gave him the role in an 1894 tale for the boy king Alfonso XIII.
Q 02In Hispanic countries, which day of the week replaces Friday as the unlucky 13th of the month?
Tuesday
Tuesday is the day to fear: martes trece plays the part that Friday the 13th plays elsewhere. Greeks share the superstition and tie the day to Ares, the god of war.
Q 03Which fruit do Spaniards eat at midnight on New Year's Eve, one for each chime of the clock?
Grapes
Grapes are the answer: twelve of them, one swallowed on each bell strike, are said to bring a lucky year. Vine growers in Alicante spread the custom in 1909 to sell a bumper harvest.
Q 04The Panama hat, despite the name, is woven from toquilla straw in which South American country?
Ecuador
Ecuador is the hat's true home, and its weaving there is on UNESCO's heritage list. The misleading name stuck because the hats were shipped out to the world through the Isthmus of Panama.
Q 05A Spanish tortilla is not a flatbread but a thick omelette of eggs and which vegetable?
Potatoes
Potatoes are the heart of the tortilla de patatas. Whether onion belongs in it splits Spain into two camps, the concebollistas and the sincebollistas.
Q 06In the Spanish town of Buñol each August, thousands of people pelt one another with which food?
Tomatoes
Tomatoes fly for about an hour at La Tomatina, leaving the town square coated in pulp. The festival is said to have grown out of a 1945 scuffle in which a crowd raided a vegetable stall for ammunition.
Q 07Cinco de Mayo, often confused with Mexican Independence Day, marks a win over which country's army?
France
France was the loser: General Ignacio Zaragoza's troops beat the army of the Second French Empire at Puebla in 1862. The day is now more popular in the United States than in Mexico.
Q 08In the Spanish series Money Heist, the robbers wear red jumpsuits and masks of which famous painter?
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí was chosen because his face is instantly recognisable as Spanish. The foundation that guards his legacy complained that nobody had asked its permission.
Q 09Which Christmas plant, native to Mexico, is known there as the flor de Nochebuena?
Poinsettia
Poinsettia is the English name, after Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first US minister to Mexico, who is credited with sending the plant home in the 1820s. Nochebuena means Christmas Eve.
Q 10Which Pixar film follows a boy named Miguel into the Land of the Dead on Mexico's Día de Muertos?
Coco
Coco won Oscars for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song. The title is not the hero's name but that of Miguel's elderly great-grandmother.
Q 11Which Spanish city lets bulls run through the old town each July during the festival of San Fermín?
Pamplona
Pamplona stages a run at 8 a.m. on each morning of the festival, and the same bulls fight in the ring that afternoon. Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises made the event famous worldwide.
Q 12In Valencia's Fallas festival, what happens to the giant satirical sculptures on the final night?
They are burned
They are burned as huge bonfires around midnight on 19 March. One figure, chosen by popular vote, is pardoned each year and spared the flames.
Q 13In Spain, who parades through towns on January 5 and leaves children gifts overnight?
The Three Wise Men
Q 21Which Spanish Golden Age painter portrayed himself at the easel in his masterpiece Las Meninas?
Diego Velázquez
Diego Velázquez stands brush in hand behind the five-year-old Infanta Margaret Theresa, while a mirror at the back reflects the king and queen. The canvas hangs in the Prado in Madrid.
Q 22Which former colony is the only sovereign country in Africa with Spanish as an official language?
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea won independence from Spain in 1968, which is why a country on the west coast of Central Africa belongs to the Spanish-speaking world.
Q 23Tamales in Mexico are most often steamed inside which natural wrapper, sometimes used as a plate?
A corn husk
The Three Wise Men ride in on floats while their pages throw sweets and collect last-minute letters. They are said to climb in over balconies by ladder, and children leave their shoes out for the presents.
Q 14Which Mexican Christmas tradition re-enacts Mary and Joseph's search for shelter over nine nights?
Las Posadas
Las Posadas takes its name from the Spanish for lodging and runs from December 16 to 24. The nine nights stand for the nine months of Mary's pregnancy.
Q 15At a quinceañera, a girl's fifteenth birthday party, her father presents which last childhood toy?
A doll
A doll, usually dressed to match her gown, is handed over in the ceremony of the last doll. In another ritual she is given her first pair of high heels.
Q 16Which orange flower, known in Mexico as cempasúchil, decorates Day of the Dead altars and graves?
Marigold
Marigold is known in Mexico as the flower of the dead. Its Spanish name comes from an Aztec word meaning twenty flower, twenty being the base of the Aztec counting system.
Q 17Which elegant skeleton lady, painted into a Diego Rivera mural, symbolises Mexico's Day of the Dead?
La Catrina
La Catrina began as a printmaker's jab at upper-class women of the Porfirio Díaz era. Rivera's 1940s fresco gave her a full figure and helped turn her into a national symbol.
Q 18By Spanish naming custom, a person's second surname is inherited from which relative?
Their mother
Their mother supplies the second surname and their father the first. Picasso is the painter's maternal surname, which he used because his paternal one was so common.
Q 19In Catalonia, teams called colles gather at festivals to build castells, which are what?
Human towers
Human towers can rise ten levels, and one is complete only when the topmost climber raises an open hand. UNESCO added the tradition to its heritage lists in 2010.
Q 20In Mexican tradition, each point of a classic spiked piñata is said to stand for what?
A deadly sin
A deadly sin sits on each of the seven points, and the clay pot stands for evil. The blindfold represents faith, and the spinning the confusion that temptation brings.
A corn husk is the classic wrapper, though banana leaves are used too. The filling inside is masa, a dough of specially treated maize, and the dish goes back to ancient Mesoamerica.
Q 24Which cold dish of raw fish marinated in citrus juice is considered the national dish of Peru?
Ceviche
Ceviche is typically made with lemon or lime juice. Before the Spanish brought citrus to Peru, coastal cooks are thought to have soured their fish with the juice of a native passionfruit.
Q 25Which hot drink, sipped from a gourd through a metal straw, is the national beverage of Uruguay?
Mate
Mate is brewed from the dried leaves of the yerba plant, and its metal straw, the bombilla, is traditionally made of silver. Argentina and Paraguay claim it as a national drink too.
Q 26Tequila, named after a town in the Mexican state of Jalisco, is distilled from which plant?
Blue agave
Blue agave thrives in the red volcanic soil around the town of Tequila. Mexican law lets the name be used only for spirit made in Jalisco and parts of four other states.
Q 27The word tapas, for Spain's small bar snacks, is related to the Spanish verb tapar, meaning what?
To cover
To cover is the meaning of tapar, and a tapa is a lid. One popular story has a slice of bread or meat laid over each sherry glass to keep the fruit flies out.
Q 28Which Aztec language, still spoken in Mexico, gave English the words avocado, coyote and chipotle?
Nahuatl
Nahuatl words reached English by way of Spanish. The language is far from dead: one variety alone, Huasteca, has more than a million speakers.
Q 29Which South American nation counts as Latino but not Hispanic under the usual definitions?
Brazil
Brazil speaks Portuguese, so it falls outside Hispanic, a label tied to Spanish-speaking countries. Spain is the reverse case: Hispanic, but not Latino.
Q 30The finest grade of Spain's jamón ibérico comes from free-roaming pigs fattened on which food?
Acorns
Acorns, bellotas in Spanish, give the top grade its label, jamón ibérico de bellota. The pigs forage for them in oak pastures known as dehesa.