biblatex-apa and babel losing the ampersand with option spanish

Question

I'm trying to use the package biblatex-apa with babel. It is working except that the APA style requires that parenthetical citations and bibliography references separate the last author by "&" and not by "and".

The following shows the options I'm using:

\usepackage[spanish]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{spanish}{spanish-apa}

However, though apa.bbx is meant to handle it, instead of "&" it is compiling with "y" (Spanish for and).

How can I manage to compile according to the APA style requirements?

Answer 1

This is a problem due to the biblatex spanish.lbx which spanish-apa.lbx inherits from. It uses a "smart and" which is replacing ampersands. Add this to your preamble.

\setcounter{smartand}{0}

I'll update the APA style with this option for spanish.

Answer 2

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[spanish]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{spanish}{spanish-apa}


\setcounter{smartand}{0}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{spanish}{%
    andothers = {et al.},
}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
Texto de relleno \parencite{bertram,companion}.
Texto de relleno \parencites{bertram,companion}.
Texto de relleno \textcite{bertram}.
\printbibliography
\end{document}