A guide to days of the week in Spanish: basic vocabulary + rules &audio! 🗓️

A hypothetical situation that’s all too familiar for everyone: there’s an important derby match coming up soon but you can’t remember the exact date of the match! What do you do?

Of course, you ask your friend: ¿Qué día es el partido? (What day is the match?) But then you freeze!

You completely forgot how to say the days of the week in Spanish. No problem, we’ve got you covered with this blog post!

I. Spanish days of the week: basic vocabulary

There’s probably no person on Earth who, regardless of the language they speak, doesn’t hate Mondays.

In order to express such a feeling in Spanish, let’s go over the names of the days of the week in Spanish:

• Lunes (Monday)
• Martes (Tuesday)
• Miércoles (Wednesday)
• Jueves (Thursday)
• Viernes (Friday)
• Sábado (Saturday)
• Domingo (Sunday)

Let’s see all of this in action! Examples coming your way:

1. Mañana es lunes, tenemos que ir a trabajar. (Tomorrow is Monday, we have to go to work.)
2. Voy al cine con mis amigos el martes. (I’m going to the movies with my friends on Tuesday.)
3. El miércoles tengo una reunión importante. (I have an important meeting on Wednesday.)
4. Jueves es mi día favorito de la semana. (Thursday is my favorite day of the week.)
5. ¡Por fin es viernes! Vamos a celebrar el fin de semana. (Finally, it’s Friday! Let’s celebrate the weekend.)
6. El sábado vamos a la playa a disfrutar del sol. (On Saturday, we’re going to the beach to enjoy the sun.)
7. Los domingos me gusta relajarme en casa con mi familia. (On Sundays, I like to relax at home with my family.)

II. Learn the days in singular and plural

In Spanish, business or working days are not pluralized. Instead, Spanish speakers use an article to tell whether it’s singular or plural. So, “Mondays” translates into “los lunes“, but if it’s a single Monday you are talking about you could see “el lunes” or “un lunes” (depending on how specific you want to be – more on that later).

By contrast, Saturdays and Sundays, which comprise el fin de semana (the weekend), may be pluralized by adding an [s] at the end of the word.

Por ejemplo (for example): sábados (Saturdays) and domingos (Sundays).

It’s easy, isn’t it?

III. Capitalization when you talk about the days of the week in Spanish?

Unlike English, the names of the days of the week in Spanish should never be capitalized, unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence.

Additionally, you should know that all days of the week are masculine. This means that the article appearing next to them should be either:

• An indefinite article: un martes (a Tuesday) or unos martes (some Tuesdays)
• A definite article: el martes (the Tuesday) or los martes (the Tuesdays)

IV. Weeks, weekends and abbreviations for the days

We already spoke about los días hábiles (working or business days), that is, lunes (Monday), martes (Tuesday), miércoles (Wednesday), jueves (Thursday), and viernes (Friday).

(Oh, and by the way, the Spanish-speaking culture has some interesting work-life balance that you might want to learn more about. Business Culture speaks more work-life balance here.)

Weekends are comprised of sábados y domingos (Saturdays and Sundays). Although Spanish speakers usually say fin de semana, which is an exact translation of “weekend”, in a more colloquial way, they say “finde”, as one word, instead of “fin de semana” (weekend). 

Common abbreviations of days in Spanish

The days of the week in Spanish also have common abbreviations.

Most days are abbreviated simply by using the first letter of the day’s name.

For example:

• Monday is abbreviated as “L.” (from “lunes“)
• Tuesday as “M.” (from “martes“)
• Thursday as “J.” (from “jueves“)
• Friday as “V.” (from “viernes“)

The abbreviations for Saturday and Sunday are usually slightly different.

Saturday is abbreviated as “Sáb.” and Sunday as “Dom.”

The only exception is Wednesday (“miércoles”). We use the abbreviation “X.” for this day as to not confuse it with “martes”.

V. How to remember their names: origin of the days

Do you know the names of the planets? In Spanish, days are named after them (except for lunes, which is inspired in the name of the moon: “Luna“, which not a planet, but a satellite).

Thinking of the names of the planets is a great way to remember the names of the days:

• lunes (Monday) comes from Luna (The Moon)
• martes (Tuesday) comes from Marte (Mars)
• miércoles (Wednesday) comes from Mercurio (Mercury)
• jueves (Thursday) comes from Júpiter (Jupiter)
• viernes (Friday) comes from Venus (Venus) 

Check out the visuals below: they will help you remember the days of the week in Spanish!

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