Does having a solid background in Latin make learning Spanish much easier?

Answer 1

Yes, it does! Once you understand Latin well, Spanish word and sentence structures become very easy to pick up, since they are more simplified and largely stem from Latin. Similarly, many Spanish words come from Latin, so it can help a great deal in picking up vocabulary. Since I know both Latin and Italian (which comes mostly from Latin), I can attend a Spanish talk and understand about 90% of it, even without having studied much Spanish. I hope that helps!