Which OpenEars method or property are you using to run recognition on your test file? There are two. Keep in mind that the VAD setting for Spanish needs to be much higher, something like 4.3 if I recall correctly, and please make sure you are using v2.041 of OpenEars and 2.04 of any plugins.
I don’t believe the file format is incorrect
You can just check what the file format is and see. I think OS X Quicktime has an info pane to check the format.