Spanish for your first 48 hours in Spain

Your first two days in Spain run as a fixed sequence: somebody behind a desk, a ride into town, a SIM card, a till, a plate of food, a room with one thing broken in it, a pharmacy after dark, and one office visit on day two that eats a morning. This page takes that sequence in order and gives you the sentence for each stop. Every Spanish row below is quoted from the survive lane of our Spanish collection, 210 phrases we wrote and reviewed, with the taxi, the room and the restaurant rows borrowed from the travel lane beside it. There are 39 rows. Learn them in this order and the two days are covered.

Hour one: the person behind the desk

Say a sentence about yourself before anybody asks you a question. Acabo de llegar. is three words and it accounts for the suitcase, the paperwork and the accent at once. It works at a passport desk, at a hotel counter and at the window of a bus you are not certain about.

Then the opener that buys a stranger's attention. Perdone, ¿me puede ayudar? is the usted form, which is what you use with anyone working, and perdone rather than perdón because you are about to take up their time.

Two rows decide how the rest of the hour sounds. Hablo un poco de español. states the level you are working at and leaves the language choice with the person who has to answer. ¿Habla inglés? hands that choice to somebody who may not have any English at all. Spend the first one early and keep the second for when the first runs out.

The ride into the city

Ask ¿Cómo llego al centro? before you leave the terminal, while there is still somebody in a uniform standing near you. On the bus the row that earns its place is ¿Me avisa cuando lleguemos? Its note says to ask the driver as you board, and that a nod is the usual answer and it works.

One row here carries a warning the translation cannot. ¿Dónde puedo coger un taxi? is ordinary in Spain, where coger is the everyday verb for taking a taxi, a bus or a seat. Across most of Latin America the same verb is obscene, and the note on the row tells you to say tomar there. Two continents, one sentence, and the collection marks the split because a translation on its own will not.

In the car, ¿Me puede llevar a esta dirección? with the address already on your screen is steadier than reciting a street name you have never said aloud.

The SIM, and the row we did not write

Necesito una tarjeta SIM. followed by Quiero una de prepago. gets you served in a phone shop or an airport kiosk. The two questions after that are the ones that cost money when you skip them. ¿Cuántos gigas tiene? uses the word the assistant uses: gigas is spoken, datos is what ends up printed on the contract. ¿Tiene permanencia? asks about the minimum term, which is the expensive half of a cheap monthly price.

There is no eSIM row in the collection. We wrote the lane for somebody standing at a counter, so a reader who lands with a profile already installed skips this stop and needs the wifi password further down instead. That is a hole in the lane and it is on the list.

Cash, card and the first shop

¿Dónde hay un cajero? comes first so that the answer to ¿Con tarjeta o en efectivo? is yours to give. Most places take a card. Some market stalls and small bars still take only cash, and finding that out at the counter with no notes on you is a bad first hour.

Two rows in this section are about how a Spanish shop physically works, and neither is guessable from English. ¿Hay que pesarlo? belongs in a supermarket, where you weigh fruit yourself at a machine and print the label before you reach the till. ¿Quién es el último? is the question you say out loud walking into a market, a bakery or a clinic waiting room: nobody is standing in a line, so you ask who is last, remember that person, and go after them.

The first meal

The trap sits in the first row you will need. La carta, por favor. asks for the list of dishes. El menú in Spain is the fixed-price set lunch, so asking for the menu gets you a different thing entirely, which is why ¿Tienen menú del día? is its own row: weekday lunch, three courses with bread and a drink.

Say the allergy line while you are ordering. Soy alérgico a los frutos secos. takes alérgica if you are a woman, and the note flags that peanut is cacahuete in Spain and maní in Latin America, which matters when you are reading a label in a hurry.

Nobody brings the bill unasked. Catch the waiter's eye and say ¿Me trae la cuenta, por favor? Waiting politely at a Spanish table is how an hour disappears.

Checking in, and the thing that is wrong with the room

Tengo una reserva a nombre de Kowalski. is the whole of check-in. Then ¿Cuál es la contraseña del wifi? and one piece of pronunciation from the note: Spaniards say wifi with Spanish vowels, wee-fee, and the English pronunciation draws a blank.

Something is wrong with the room. It is usually small and it is usually one of two things. No hay agua caliente. and No funciona la calefacción. are the pair to have ready, and the second is the row you will reuse for years, because no funciona is the frame for anything broken: the lift, the lock, the boiler, the card reader.

The landlord, the porter and the parcel

¿Puede venir a arreglarlo? is the follow-up to whatever is broken, and it is the sentence that turns a complaint into an appointment. Ask it in the same breath as the problem.

The other two rows belong to the building. Most Spanish blocks have a portero or a portería, so Deje el paquete en la portería. is where a parcel goes while you are out. Estoy abajo, ¿me abre? is for the door phone, and the address that goes with it runs floor then letter: segundo B is written 2ºB.

The pharmacy at nine in the evening

This is the moment the collection was written for. You are tired, something hurts, and the shops are shut. ¿Dónde hay una farmacia? finds the green cross, and the note carries the part nobody tells you: the all-night one is the farmacia de guardia, and its rota is listed on the door of every pharmacy in the area, including the closed ones.

Inside, three sentences finish the visit. Necesito algo para el dolor de cabeza. swaps its last words for whatever is wrong. ¿Necesito receta? tells you in one answer whether this ends here or at a health centre tomorrow. Una cada ocho horas. is what you will hear back, and hearing it correctly is the whole point of the trip.

The emergency number, and the sentence you would have to say

The number is 112, and the note on that row says it is the same across Spain and the EU, with 911 in Mexico and much of Latin America. Read the row once now. Nobody looks up a phrase while a stranger is on the floor.

What you would actually say is shorter than you think. Es una emergencia. and Hay una persona herida. open the call. Me han robado la cartera. is the version of the same panic that ends at a police station instead, where poner una denuncia is the fixed phrase and the report number is what an insurer asks for.

Here is the honest part. An operator's next question is where you are, and the Spanish collection has no row that answers it, because your address is not something we can write for you. Take the address of wherever you are sleeping, in the floor-then-letter format from the section above, and put it in your phone before you need it.

Day two: the errand everyone underestimates

The errand is the town hall. Quiero empadronarme. asks to be put on the padrón, the town hall register, and our note says you need it before almost everything else in Spain. That is as far as the note goes and as far as this page goes: who has to register, by when, and with which papers depends on the town hall and changes, so check the current rules for your own town before you travel across it.

The row that saves the morning is the one about getting in the door. ¿Dónde pido cita previa? exists because cita previa is compulsory at most Spanish offices, it is booked online, and walking in rarely works. Book it from the airport on day one if you can. ¿Qué documentos necesito? is a phone-call question. Ask it before you travel across a city for an appointment, and use the same sentence at a bank, a phone shop and a rental agency.

One more errand belongs to the same morning and takes ten minutes. Necesito una tarjeta de transporte. gets you the local travel card, which is cheaper than single tickets from the second day onward and stops you buying a paper ticket every time you move.

What a list cannot do on day one

Three things go wrong that no page of rows can fix. The first is fatigue. After a flight and six conversations your ear stops separating words, and Spanish spoken at ordinary speed arrives as one long word with stresses in it. Short rows help a little at that point. They do not repair an ear that has stopped working, so put the coffee before the office and the office before the evening.

The second is speed. Our notes mark Spain against Latin America carefully, and they say nothing about how fast anybody talks, because the difference between a phrase you know and a phrase you catch is a skill this format cannot teach. Ask for it directly with más despacio and expect to ask twice.

The third is the official who wants a document you do not have. There is no row for that, and we thought about writing one. What we would add if we rebuilt the survive lane is the sentence for the moment a form is handed to you in Spanish and you cannot read it. Until then the closest thing is asking what documents are needed before you go, which is why that row sits with the day-two errand and not with the arrivals.

Making it stick

Take the four rows for the moment you are walking into tomorrow and say them out loud until your mouth knows them without your head. Reading a table again does very little for the thing that fails at a counter, which is retrieval while somebody waits.

The app runs the same idea in the background. Plug the phone in, hear one phrase: the Spanish, a pause, the English, a pause, the Spanish once more, once the Shortcuts automation is set up and the platform lets the audio through. The entry you hear is chosen by a weighted sampler that favours what you have not heard lately, and it makes no claim about what you remember. The argument for doing it this way is in One word per charge: why a lesson would fail.

These collections are web pages first and become app packs with text-to-speech audio later, with no date promised. The six lists and the method behind them sit on The Vocabcord 500, and the rest of the Spanish list, travel and work lanes included, is in The 500 Spanish phrases you actually need.

Common questions

What Spanish do you need at the airport when you land?

Four sentences cover the first hour. Acabo de llegar. accounts for the suitcase and the paperwork in three words. Perdone, ¿me puede ayudar? opens a question to anybody working. Hablo un poco de español. sets your level before somebody guesses at it, and ¿Habla inglés? is the fallback for when that level runs out.

How do you buy a SIM card in Spanish?

Start with Necesito una tarjeta SIM. and add Quiero una de prepago. for pay as you go. Then ask ¿Cuántos gigas tiene? for the data, using gigas because that is the spoken word, and ¿Tiene permanencia? to find out whether the price locks you into a minimum term.

What is the emergency number in Spain?

It is 112, the same number across Spain and the rest of the EU. In Mexico and much of Latin America it is 911. The row itself is ¿Cuál es el número de emergencias? and the sentence that follows it on a call is Es una emergencia. Have your address written down before you ever need either.

How do you find a pharmacy open at night in Spain?

Ask ¿Dónde hay una farmacia? and look for the green cross. The one open through the night is called the farmacia de guardia, and the rota is posted on the door of every pharmacy nearby, so a closed pharmacy still tells you which one is open.