Puerto Rico Trivia
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107 free Puerto Rico trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
51 free Puerto Rico trivia questions with answers. Puerto Rico is a Caribbean island that has been a Spanish colony, a US territory and, since 1952, a commonwealth whose people are American citizens who cannot vote for president. This quiz runs the whole story: the Taíno name for the island, Columbus's 1493 landing, the conquistador who became first governor, the 1898 handover, the 1917 citizenship law and the string of statehood referendums, plus the geography behind it all, from the only tropical rainforest in the US forest system to the deepest trench in the Atlantic. The easy questions ask about the coquí, mofongo, coquito, the flag and the national anthem. The harder ones get into the king who protected El Yunque in 1876, the year Congress fixed the spelling 'Porto Rico', the turnout in the 2017 referendum, and the name of the deepest point in the Atlantic. Music and sport get their share too: reggaeton's Panamanian roots, Bad Bunny's Grammy, Roberto Clemente's last flight and the night Puerto Rico beat Team USA at basketball. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia or an official page, and the sentence that establishes it is shown under each question, so you can settle the argument at the dinner table.
30 of 107 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the Taíno call Puerto Rico before Europeans arrived?
Borikén
Borikén. The name never died out: 'Boricua', which comes from it, is still the everyday word Puerto Ricans use for themselves.
Q 02Christopher Columbus reached Puerto Rico on 19 November 1493 during which of his voyages?
His second voyage
His second voyage. Unlike the first, it was a colonising fleet rather than a scouting trip: 17 ships and well over a thousand men had sailed from Cádiz.
Q 03The lamb on Puerto Rico's coat of arms is the emblem of which saint, the island's original namesake?
John the Baptist
John the Baptist. Columbus named the island San Juan Bautista in 1493, and the coat of arms the Spanish crown granted in 1511 still shows the saint's lamb holding a banner.
Q 04Which conquistador founded the settlement of Caparra in 1508 and became Puerto Rico's first governor?
Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León. He lost the governorship in 1511, when Columbus's son Diego won it in court; two years later he sailed north and landed in Florida.
Q 05San Juan, founded in 1521, is the oldest European-founded city under the US flag, decades older than which Florida rival?
St. Augustine
St. Augustine, founded in 1565, calls itself the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States, but by then San Juan had already stood for 44 years.
Q 06When Spanish colonists founded San Juan in 1521, what did they call the settlement?
Ciudad de Puerto Rico
Ciudad de Puerto Rico, the 'rich port city'. Settlers moved there from Caparra, their first colony, to a rocky islet at the harbour entrance.
Q 07US troops under General Nelson Miles first came ashore at which southern town in 1898?
Guánica
Guánica. The convoy had sailed from Guantánamo Bay four days earlier, and the campaign it opened was cut short by an armistice in under three weeks.
Q 08Under the 1898 treaty ending the Spanish–American War, Spain ceded Puerto Rico and which Pacific island?
Guam
Guam. In the same treaty Spain sold the Philippines to the United States for $20 million, a haul that established the US as a Pacific power.
Q 09Which 1917 law granted US citizenship to Puerto Ricans?
Jones–Shafroth Act
Jones–Shafroth Act. Two months later Congress passed a wartime draft law, and about 20,000 of the island's new citizens were called up for World War I.
Q 10Puerto Rico's official Spanish name, 'Estado Libre Asociado', is rendered in English as what?
Commonwealth
Commonwealth. The Spanish literally means 'Free Associated State', yet Puerto Rico is neither a US state nor independent: it is an unincorporated territory.
Q 11Who served as the first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico, from 1949 to 1965?
Luis Muñoz Marín
Luis Muñoz Marín. Early in his career he campaigned for independence, then changed his mind and built four terms on economic partnership with the United States.
Q 12Which mid-century program lured US manufacturers to Puerto Rico with tax breaks?
Operation Bootstrap
Operation Bootstrap, known in Spanish as Manos a la Obra. It pulled workers out of the sugarcane fields and into factories, remaking a farm economy into an industrial one.
Q 13Which languages are official for the government of Puerto Rico?
Spanish and English
Q 21The coquí frog, an unofficial symbol of Puerto Rico, gets its name from what?
The sound of its call
The sound of its call. Males sing a two-note 'co-quí': the 'co' warns off rival males and the 'quí' attracts females.
Q 22For three decades after 1898, how did the US government officially spell Puerto Rico's name?
Porto Rico
Porto Rico. The anglicized spelling ran through US laws and company names until Congress voted in 1932 to restore the Spanish original.
Q 23The Puerto Rican flag was modelled on the flag of which other country?
Cuba
Cuba. Independence exiles adopted the design in 1895 with the Cuban colours reversed, a sign of the close ties between the two islands' patriots under Spanish rule.
Spanish and English. English lost that status in 1991, when a law made Spanish the only official language, but it was later restored.
Q 14Cerro de Punta, Puerto Rico's highest peak, rises in which mountain range?
Cordillera Central
Cordillera Central. The peak reaches about 4,390 feet in the range that crosses the island east to west, whose heights catch the trade-wind rain and leave the south coast drier.
Q 15El Yunque holds what distinction within the US National Forest System?
Only tropical rainforest
Only tropical rainforest. At nearly 29,000 acres El Yunque is also one of the smallest national forests, yet one of the most biologically diverse.
Q 16El Yunque became a forest reserve in 1876, four years after which US national park was created?
Yellowstone
Yellowstone. It was the Spanish Crown that set the forest aside, while the island was still a colony, making it one of the oldest protected forests in the Western Hemisphere.
Q 17Which English sea captain did the defenders of San Juan's El Morro fortress beat back in 1595?
Francis Drake
Francis Drake. He struck while the fort was still being built, was driven off, and died of disease at sea two months later on the same voyage.
Q 18Which Old San Juan building, in use since the 16th century, is the governor's official residence?
La Fortaleza
La Fortaleza. It was begun in 1533 as the city's first fortress, built against raids by rival European powers, and only later became the governor's mansion.
Q 19Puerto Rico's Arecibo dish was the world's largest single-dish telescope until which country's FAST overtook it?
China
China. FAST's dish is more than 1,600 feet wide against Arecibo's 1,000, but it was the older telescope that beamed a radio message toward the stars in 1974.
Q 20Which James Bond film staged its climactic fight at Puerto Rico's Arecibo telescope?
GoldenEye
GoldenEye. The 1995 showdown was shot on the telescope, which was lost in 2020 when the 900-ton platform hanging above its dish crashed down.
Q 24Puerto Rican musicians helped create salsa, a style that developed mainly in which US city?
New York
New York. Bandleaders of Puerto Rican heritage such as Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri reshaped Caribbean dance music there by mixing in jazz.
Q 25What did most of the US Navy's Vieques bombing range become after 2003?
Wildlife refuge
Wildlife refuge. Mass protests in 1999 and 2000 helped force the Navy out, and clearing leftover ordnance kept parts of the land closed for years afterwards.
Q 26Mosquito Bay on Vieques, rated the world's brightest bioluminescent bay by Guinness in 2006, glows because of what?
Dinoflagellates
Dinoflagellates. The single-celled Pyrodinium bahamense light up whenever the water is disturbed, and the bay holds a denser swarm of them than any other known.
Q 27Which rusting relics of US Navy target practice are a famous sight on Culebra's Flamenco Beach?
Tanks
Tanks. The Navy shelled and bombed Culebra from 1939 until 1975, when protests by islanders ended the exercises, and the hulks were left to rust on the sand.
Q 28The cobblestones paving Old San Juan's narrow streets are famous for being what color?
Blue
Blue. They pave the old walled city, which a Dutch force seized from its landward side in 1625, prompting Spain to guard that flank with its largest fort in the Americas.
Q 29Which rum maker runs the giant 'Cathedral of Rum' distillery near San Juan?
Bacardi
Bacardi. The company was founded on another Caribbean island in 1862, yet its plant in Cataño now turns out about 85% of all the rum it makes.
Q 30Which San Juan hotel claims its bartender Ramón 'Monchito' Marrero invented the piña colada in 1954?
Caribe Hilton
Caribe Hilton. A rival sign hangs in Old San Juan, where the restaurant Barrachina says its own bartender created the drink in 1963.