Abra Palabra was created in January of 2007.

Our goal is to teach Spanish and create awareness of diverse cultural characteristics. We want to share with our students the joy of our music, food, customs and other aspects of our culture.

Marcela Estibill is the main teacher of the school, but other teachers are often invited to teach classes.

In addition to being a teacher, Marcela is a certified translator. She translates all kinds of legal documents from Spanish into English or from English into Spanish. See translation.

We are located at 3700 East 34th Street in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis on the MTC #9 bus line across the street from Longfellow Park.

Marcela Estibill is a Chilean native who has been teaching since 1987. She believes that in order to learn a language, you must enjoy yourself. She has studied Italian, German and French.

Marcela began her teaching career as a TEFL (Teacher of English as a Foreign Language) in Chile. Her first students were adults who needed to learn English for their jobs. In 1991, she began teaching Spanish to non-Spanish speaking executives working in Chile.

Marcela came to Minnesota in 1993 to teach Spanish to children and adults and enjoyed it so much she decided to stay. Since then she has taught at the College of Saint Catherine and the University of Minnesota. For the past six years, until its closing in 2008, Marcela was teaching at the Resource Center of the Americas. She currently teaches at Century College when she is not busy at Abra Palabra.

Marcela also works as a translator specializing in the medical field. She worked for Hennepin County Medical Center for five years as a Spanish Interpreter. Her translation experience is in legal translations (legal documents, contracts and educational documents). And she has translated two books: “Essential Atlas of Physiology” and “Line and Shading in Drawing”.