The first publication of Hispania dates to the earliest days of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese and the first issue featured a summation of the possibilities of the new organization, written by Lawrence Wilkins, as well as an outline of future plans for the journal written by its founding editor in chief, Aurelio M. Espinosa (Stanford University).
[3] Accordingly, Hispania's original subtitle was "A Journal Devoted to the Interests of Teachers of Spanish," which reflected the earnest pedagogic tone and content of its first volumes.
Walsh is considered by many, including his successor, Robert Mead Jr., to have developed Hispania into the modern language journal it is today.
[4] Walsh broke with the previous editors' focus on pedagogy by broadening Hispania's scope, diversifying its contents, adding new sections, soliciting contributions from colleagues known for their expertise, and making sure that every issue of the journal had something of practical use and pedagogical value to both the K-12 teacher and the graduate-level professor.
Meade reiterated the message that articles must be broad enough in scope to interest the more than 5,000 members, nearly half of whom taught in secondary schools.
During his three-year tenure as editor, Menton also strove to rectify an imbalance in the journal's article ratio by calling for more literary contributions from members.
Sackett added "Pedagogy" as a special section in Hispania in order to address the changing face of the classroom that resulted from the advent of computers and the new concern for communicative competence.
During her editorship, Hispania became the first journal in the humanities to digitalize and produce a CD of articles dating from its inception in 1917 through 1990, a project for which members volunteered to prepare issues or volumes.
The end of her editorship coincided with her induction as a permanent member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language at a ceremony at the Instituto Cervantes in New York City.