I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it's all totally gone from my brain.
My mother's native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.
We learned it but we were explicitly told it was Spain only. You would want to know how it works whether or not you plan to use it.
I guess but I've never once used it or heard it used all my life and I speak Spanish on the daily (outside of class and video games that weren't localized to LATAM). It's just weird how much emphasis my class put on it, it's like insisting that English language learners practice cockney rhyming slang just in case they come across a Londoner or something.