Still struggling with writing dates in Spanish? It is very easy, keep reading. You will learn how to write the date in Spanish in a few simple steps. 

Knowing how to write or tell the date is incredibly important, whatever your language is. A proper understanding on how to tell the date in Spanish is quite useful if you are visiting a Spanish-speaking country. For example, if you book a hotel room for a few days or if you have some planned visits, you should know how to express in Spanish the corresponding dates. On the other hand, it is also quite useful if you are writing a nice story or talking about a historical event with your friends or with your teacher. This may seem easy, but the way to write the date varies depending on the country you are in. 

Okay, first of all, it is very important to know the days of the week and the months in Spanish. 

Let’s start with the days of the week: 

As you may have noticed, in Spanish-speaking countries the first day of the week is Monday and not Sunday. 

Now, let’s see the months in Spanish: 

The difference between writing the date in English and Spanish is small, but significant. In most English-speaking countries the month goes before the day (March 5, 2021), but in Spanish, this is not the case. If you want to say the date in Spanish, you must first say the day, then the month and finally the year, so March 5, 2021 would be “5 de marzo de 2021”. 

Formula to tell the date in Spanish: 

DAY + de + MONTH + de + YEAR 

As you can see, in Spanish we use the prepositions “de” before the month and before the year. So, as an example, let’s look at some of the most important dates of world history: 

• July 20, 1969 – 20 de julio de 1969.

• October 12, 1492 – 12 de octubre de 1492. 
• January 2, 1942 – 2 de enero de 1492. 
• September 1, 1939 – 1 de septiembre de 1939. 

It is easy, right? But there are some aspects you should keep in mind. Spanish does not capitalize names of the days of the week and months of the year. Also, if you write the date at the top of the page to indicate what day it is, it’s okay to write it like this (5 de marzo de 2021). But if you write the date in the middle of a sentence to explain that something happened that day, you must use the definite article “el”. “Nací el 4 de marzo de 1997” (I was born on March 4, 1997). 

On the other hand, if you want to make the date even longer and add the day of the week, to be more specific, just put the day of the week before the number (martes, 4 de marzo de 1997). In this case, if we write the date in the middle of a sentence to explain that something happened that day, the definite article “el” must be placed before the day of the week and not before the number: “nací el martes, 4 de marzo de 1997” (I was born on Tuesday, March 4, 1997).

We really hope you found the information you were looking for and above all, we hope you have learned something new! If you are interested in Spanish, you can find more information about this magnificent language and the incredible places where it is spoken. Visit our blog to learn more things. We will help you to be a more interesting person!

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Written by: Ana Calero Castillo