As for your Spanish, don’t worry, persist. One day it will cease to feel like a language, it will become the way things are.
-- Alvaro (chapter 2)

Importance: Alvaro’s attempt to calm Simon’s worries about the quality of his Spanish functions on two levels. On a literal level, it demonstrates that Alvaro is a kind man and that, like everyone else in Novilla, he is extending goodwill towards Simon. On a metaphorical level, Simon’s difficulties grasping Spanish are symbolic of his difficulty adapting to the new way of thinking and behaving that is accepted as normal by the people of Novilla.

Benevolence, I must tell you, is what we keep encountering here. Everyone wishes us well, everyone is ready to be kind to us. We are positively borne along on a cloud of goodwill. But it all remains a bit abstract. Can goodwill by itself satisfy our needs? Is it...
-- Simon (chapter 7)