Starting with the February edition, four pages of College Park Here & Now will be published in Spanish.

The insert, College Park Aquí y Ahora, will feature news, business and human-interest articles from the English-language pages of the newspaper, translated into Spanish by interpreters at the University of Maryland’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

“We want the Spanish-speaking community to be able to read the same news about College Park as those who read the English-language version of the newspaper every month,” Sharon O’Malley, College Park Here & Now’s managing editor, said. “So for example, if there’s a city election, we would do a story in English about the city election, and then we would translate it into Spanish so that the Spanish-speaking audience also can have that important information.”

College Park Here & Now’s sister publication, Hyattsville Life & Times, also will feature a four-page Spanish-language insert, Hyattsville Este Mes. Both are part of a pilot project paid for with $8,000 in grants from Prince George’s County Council Vice Chair Eric Olson (District 3) and members Tom Dernoga (District 1) and Wanika Fisher (District 2).

The newspapers’ publisher, Streetcar Suburbs Publishing, will include the insert in each issue through the summer, according to Executive Director Kit Slack. Slack said the nonprofit publishing company will look for additional grants that will allow the insert to become a permanent feature in both papers.

Slack, who speaks Spanish, said being the parent of public school children has made her aware “that there are a lot of recent immigrants who are residents in our city, and they get our newspaper, but it doesn’t currently serve them as well as we could.”

Nigel Maynard, managing editor of Hyattsville Life & Times, said the Spanish-language insert will help  both cities’ large Spanish-speaking populations better engage with the community. 

“We have a large Latino population in Hyattsville, and to be able to reach them with news and information they need and can use is a wonderful thing,” Maynard said. “I think we should also support our fellow neighbors in a moment that can seem hostile toward them. Hopefully, this small gesture can help them navigate the current climate.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest American Community Survey (ACS), nearly one‑third of College Park residents living in off‑campus households—31.3%—speak Spanish at home. The highest concentrations are found in the neighborhoods closest to the University of Maryland (UMD), including Old Town, Calvert Hills and the downtown area, as well as in North College Park, particularly Hollywood and Daniels Park.

This figure does not include children younger than 5 or students who live in dorms, fraternity or sorority houses, or other university‑owned housing. Together, those two groups make up roughly half of the city’s total population but are not counted in the ACS data.

College Park City Councilmember Jacob Hernandez (District 1), who championed the addition of Spanish-language versions of city government publications once created only for English-language readers, said publishing Spanish-language articles in the local newspaper will “expand people’s knowledge of their civic responsibilities and what’s going on around their neighborhoods and community.”

Hernandez added: “It’s going to be residents whose parents only speak Spanish. It’s going to be residents who have not ever been targeted for hyper-local news, or haven’t been the audience. It’s going to be for folks [for whom] hyper-local news has never previously served a role.”

To read the inaugural edition of College Park Aquí y Ahora, check your mailbox the week of Jan. 26.

Managing Editor Sharon O’Malley contributed to this story.

This story has been revised from the original to update the name of the Spanish-language section.