Because Spanish is widely spoken, take in consideration all the Southern America for example.... if you don't count Brazil and some French colonies in... it's spoken only Spanish over there. Spanish is, as a matter of fact, the second language spoken in u.s.a too. Italian is spoken only in Italy instead, not considering some exceptions. It's not that that strange to see more people willing to learn Spanish so :)

I know a lot of people who are learning Italian instead of Spanish! In my high school there is a special class called "European" which is more specific about Italian ;)

For the record, I think that Italian is a beautiful language and that Italy is a beautiful country. I don't imagine that it is any more difficult to learn than Spanish. However, as others have already said, Spanish is both useful, widely-used, and beautiful. When I was a child, I lived in Germany for several years. All the German that I learned I eventually forgot due to never using it. When I decided to try and finally learn a second language completely, I did not forget the lesson that I learned. Make sure that you are learning a language that you will continue to use regularly.

Simple question of numbers. Italian has around 65 million native speakers. Spanish has nearly 500 million native speakers. It's hardly surprising that many more people are interested in learning Spanish than Italian.

I am of Italian descent and studied it for 4 years in high school as well as 4 years of Spanish at the same time, which was why I became a foreign language major in college. It is a lovely language.