Spanish for your first 48 hours in Spain

This guide follows one possible route through your first two days in Spain: 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. Use the sections that match your plans; 39 rows cannot cover every conversation.

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? uses usted, a polite default with an unfamiliar adult. Perdón can also introduce a request; perdone is not the only acceptable opener.

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. Use either when it fits: explaining your level and asking to switch languages are both reasonable.

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? Ask the driver or another passenger, and keep track of the route yourself too.

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. In countries including Mexico and Argentina it also has a sexual meaning, so tomar avoids that ambiguity. 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 short for gigabytes, while datos means data and appears in both speech and writing. ¿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 some shops have you weigh loose produce and print a label, while others do it at the till. ¿Quién es el último? is the question you say out loud walking into a market, a bakery or a clinic waiting room: if there is no clear line or numbered-ticket system, 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. Menú can mean a set meal or the menu itself. That is why ¿Tienen menú del día? is its own row: a fixed-price daily meal, often at lunchtime. Check which courses and drinks are included.

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.

When you are ready to pay, catch the waiter's eye and say ¿Me trae la cuenta, por favor? It is a straightforward request; you do not need to wait for the bill to appear.

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

Tengo una reserva a nombre de Kowalski. opens check-in; the desk may also need identification and booking details. Then ¿Cuál es la contraseña del wifi? and one piece of pronunciation from the note: in Spain wifi is commonly pronounced wee-fee, with Spanish vowels.

If something is wrong with the room, these two examples give you a way to report it. 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: it asks whether someone can come and repair it. Ask it in the same breath as the problem.

The other two rows belong to the building. If the building has a portero or a portería, Deje el paquete en la portería. asks for a parcel to be left there while you are out. Check that the concierge accepts deliveries. 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 farmacia de guardia provides out-of-hours service. Check the local pharmacy rota and access instructions; a duty pharmacy is not necessarily a shop with its doors open all night.

Inside, these sentences help explain what you need. Necesito algo para el dolor de cabeza. swaps its last words for whatever is wrong. ¿Necesito receta? asks whether a medicine needs a prescription. That answer does not tell you how urgently a symptom needs care. Una cada ocho horas. means one every eight hours. It is an example for understanding an instruction, not a dose to follow; use only the instructions given for your own medicine.

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, while Mexico uses 911. Other countries may use different numbers. 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 needs the actual location of the emergency. Follow their questions and give the street, number, town and any useful access details. 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

If you are moving here, one early errand may be the town hall. Quiero empadronarme. asks to be put on the padrón, the municipal population register. This concerns living in the town, not a routine step for every short visit. Check the town hall's registration procedure and required documents; Madrid's padrón page is one example, not a rule for every municipality.

The row that saves the morning is the one about getting in the door. ¿Dónde pido cita previa? asks where to arrange an appointment. Whether one is required, and whether booking is online, by phone or in person, depends on the office and procedure. Check before travelling there. ¿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 possible errand is the transport office or ticket machine. Necesito una tarjeta de transporte. asks for the local travel card. Compare the fare, zones and expected number of journeys; it is not automatically cheaper from day two.

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 several conversations, ordinary-speed Spanish can start to sound like one long word. Short rows help a little. Put a difficult office visit at a time when you are rested, if you can.

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 you can say them without looking. Reading helps recognition; producing a phrase while somebody waits takes practice too.

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. Set up the Shortcuts automation on iOS; on Android, check the background and battery settings for direct charger detection. Playback remains subject to platform restrictions. 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 useful sentences for 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 for gigabytes, 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. Mexico uses 911; check the destination's emergency numbers elsewhere. The row itself is ¿Cuál es el número de emergencias? and the sentence that follows it on a call is Es una emergencia. Give your current location and follow the operator's questions.

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

Ask ¿Dónde hay una farmacia? and look for the green cross. Look for the local farmacia de guardia rota and follow its opening or on-call instructions. Pharmacy notices and the local pharmacists' association can help; check the current service before going.