Equatoguinean Portuguese

Portuguese navigators were the first Europeans to explore the Gulf of Guinea in 1471. Fernão do Pó located the island of Bioko on European maps that year, looking for a route to India, which he named Formosa (however, it was initially known by the name of its discoverer).^[9]

In 1493, Dom João II of Portugal proclaimed himself, along with the rest of his royal titles, as Lord of Guinea and the first Lord of Corisco. The Portuguese colonized the islands of Bioko, Annobón and Corisco in 1494, and converted them into slave trading posts.^[10]

In 1641, the Dutch East India Company established itself without Portuguese consent on the island of Bioko, temporarily centralizing the slave trade in the Gulf of Guinea there, until the Portuguese returned to make their presence felt on the island in 1648, replacing the Dutch Company with their own Corisco Company dedicated to the same trade, building one of the first European buildings on the island, the Ponta Joko fort.^[11][12]

Portugal sold slave labor^[13] from Corisco under special contracts to France, which hired up to 49,000 equatoguinean slaves, to Spain and England in 1713 and 1753, the main collaborators in this trade being the Bengas, who had good relations with the European colonial authorities (who in turn did not intervene in the country's internal politics, which undoubtedly helped), and who also had their own slave economic system, with their private servants generally being the Pamues and the Nvikos.^{[citation needed]}

The islands remained in Portuguese hands until March 1778, after the treaties of San Ildefonso (1777) and Pardo (1778), by which the islands were ceded to Spain, along with free trade rights in a sector of the coast of the Gulf of Guinea between the Niger and Ogooué rivers, in exchange for the disputed Colonia del Sacramento.^{[citation needed]}

Portuguese was officially recognized as the third official language in Equatorial Guinea^[14] on July 20, 2010, in order to acquire full membership in the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries). The country also sought the support of the eight member countries (Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and East Timor) to promote Portuguese language teaching in the country, to provide vocational training for its students, and to increase their recognition by the countries of the Lusophone community.^[15] On July 20, 2012, the CPLP again rejected Equatorial Guinea's request for full membership,^[16] but it was finally accepted during the Dili summit in of East Timor on July 23, 2014.^[17][18]

In the same year, the government of Equatorial Guinea said it would take measures to spread the Portuguese language in the country, by promoting its teaching in primary schools, and also approved the creation of a multidisciplinary Portuguese-speaking study center dedicated to CPLP countries, whose doors opened to the public in 2015.^[19]