This article aims to study narrative complexity in written texts produced by Spanish heritage
speakers growing up in two linguistic regions of Switzerland. Texts produced in their heritage
language by children living either in French- or German-speaking parts of Switzerland were
analyzed and compared to texts written by Spanish speaking children growing up in a mostly
monolingual context in Argentina. According to the literature, it was expected that children’s
heritage language command and literacy abilities would mask their narrative competence in
Spanish (i.e., that heritage speakers would show lower narrative complexity than their
monolingual peers). The participants were 138 pupils aged between 9 and 12;5 (twelve years and
five months), distributed in three groups: Spanish heritage language speakers living in German-
speaking Switzerland (n=66), Spanish heritage language speakers living in French-speaking
Switzerland (n=25), and a comparison Group made up of Spanish speakers growing up in a
monolingual context (n=47). Heritage speakers’ parents also completed a questionnaire
describing the children’s linguistic background. We did not find significant differences between
groups in terms of story grammar components, suggesting that command of language and writing
constraints do not affect narrative complexity development in heritage language speakers.