When you report what someone said at a different time or in a different place, the words that anchor their message to here and now usually need to be replaced. Hoy, mañana, aquí, and este make sense from the original speaker's standpoint, but a listener hearing the report later or somewhere else needs new anchors. Spanish handles this with a set of predictable substitutions.
Time References That Shift
The table below summarizes the most common time shifts after a past reporting verb. These replacements assume you are reporting the statement from a different day or moment.
| Direct speech | Indirect speech |
|---|---|
| hoy | ese día / aquel día |
| ayer | el día anterior |
| mañana | al día siguiente |
| anoche | la noche anterior |
| ahora | entonces / en ese momento |
| la semana que viene | la semana siguiente |
| el mes pasado | el mes anterior |
Time Shifts in Action
«Hoy no trabajo.» → Dijo que ese día no trabajaba.
'I'm not working today.' → He said that he wasn't working that day.
«Llegaré mañana.» → Dijo que llegaría al día siguiente.
'I'll arrive tomorrow.' → He said that he would arrive the next day.
«Nos vimos ayer.» → Contó que se habían visto el día anterior.
'We saw each other yesterday.' → He said that they had seen each other the day before.
«Ahora estoy ocupada.» → Respondió que en ese momento estaba ocupada.
'I'm busy now.' → She replied that she was busy at that moment.
Place References
Place words follow the same logic. If the reporter is no longer in the location the original speaker mentioned, aquí usually becomes allí or ahí.
| Direct speech | Indirect speech |
|---|---|
| aquí / acá | allí / allá |
| este / esta | aquel / aquella |
| venir | ir |
| traer | llevar |
«Vengan aquí.» → Nos dijo que fuéramos allí.
'Come here.' → He told us to go there.
«Este libro es mío.» → Dijo que aquel libro era suyo.
'This book is mine.' → He said that that book was his.
Perspective Determines the Shift
The shifts above are not mechanical: they depend on who is reporting, when, and where. If nothing has changed since the original statement, the words stay the same.
Suppose María says at 9:00 «Hoy voy al mercado». If you report it later the same day, from the same place, to someone who also thinks of today as hoy, you can say:
María dijo que hoy va al mercado.
María said that she's going to the market today.
But if you report it the following week, the anchor word hoy no longer matches your present moment, so you must shift it:
María dijo que aquel día iba al mercado.
María said that she was going to the market that day.
Mixed Shifts Inside One Sentence
Often a single sentence needs several adjustments at once: pronoun, tense, time, and place all moving together. Train your ear to catch all the pieces.
«Mañana te espero aquí.» → Dijo que al día siguiente me esperaría allí.
'Tomorrow I'll wait for you here.' → He said that the next day he would wait for me there.
«Este fin de semana voy a descansar.» → Dijo que aquel fin de semana iba a descansar.
'This weekend I'm going to rest.' → He said that that weekend he was going to rest.
Mastering time and place shifts keeps your reports clear and prevents listeners from mistakenly thinking the original day or location is the same as yours. Together with Tense Shifts, these are the two pillars of natural-sounding reported speech.
Related Topics
- Reported Speech OverviewB1 — How Spanish reports what someone else said using direct and indirect speech.
- Tense ShiftsB2 — How verb tenses move backward when reporting speech from a past moment in Spanish.
- Dice que vs Dijo queB1 — How the tense of the reporting verb changes whether you backshift the embedded verb.