Quezon complained that almost as soon as he left Manila his speeches would need to be translated, as neither Spanish nor English could be used as a medium of successful communication throughout the national territory. Dr. Inés Villa, the 1932 Premio Zobel awardee, wrote in her prize-winning work "Filipinas en el camino de la cultura" that the educational system during the American period succeeded in its objective of widely disseminating the English language and making it an official language of the government, legislature, courts, commerce and private life, adding that the United States managed to achieve with English for only three decades what Spain failed to achieve with the Spanish language during its approximately four centuries of rule in the Philippines, further noting that as of the writing of her work, for every Filipino that speaks Spanish, there are approximately ten others that can speak English. In 1934, the Tydings-McDuffie Act excluded Spanish entirely from the curriculum of public schools, while the 1934 Constitutional Convention set 1940 as the expiry date of the usage of Spanish as the official language of the legislature and of the courts. The years of the American colonial period have been identified as the Golden Age of Philippine Literature in Spanish by numerous scholars such as Estanislao Alinea, Luis Mariñas and Lourdes Brillantes. One explanation given to such a designation was the rich volume of literary output produced during this era using the Spanish language. Among the great Filipino literary writers of the period were Fernando María Guerrero, Jesús Balmori, Manuel Bernabé, Claro M. Recto and Antonio Abad. There were three reasons provided for this development, namely the relative freedom of expression during the American period compared to the previous Spanish colonial era, the publication venues provided by the Spanish language periodicals and periodicals written in other languages but with Spanish language sections, and the presence of the Premio Zobel. However, Estanislao Alinea also referred to those years as the "Period of Efflorescence", highlighting the fact the behind the apparent vitality and productivity of these Spanish language writers lied the period of slow decadence and gradual decline of the language itself in the Philippines. Additionally, despite the relevance given to many of these writers in their social and nationalistic roles, even earning them an entry in the 1996 Encyclopedia of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), most of their literary works received scarce public