This paper focuses on the role of the press and, more specifically, on linguistic columnism as a key agent in the ideological construction of Spanish as a common language in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spain. The glottopolitical approach allows us to analyse and connect the dissemination and elaboration of this ideologeme coinciding with key cultural and political sociohistorical moments in the Spanish-speaking world. It is well-known that the spread of language ideologies has a naturalizing effect, that is, ideologies acquire an appearance of inevitability and an objectification that often hides the restricted interests of certain social groups, generally hegemonic. In this sense, language columns are considered to be suitable texts for metalinguistic analysis, given that they not only bear witness to the debates present at different times regarding the Spanish language, in the particular case at hand, and other languages in contact, but they also implicitly disseminate an ideological stance on the conception of language and linguistic authority. These discourses reflect the discussions about changes in the language, support, resistance, and struggles for the meaning of words.