Few topics in modern peninsular Spanish are as politically charged as lenguaje inclusivo — the family of strategies for making gender-marked grammar more visible, balanced, or neutral. The debate cuts across linguistics, gender politics, and party politics: the Real Academia Española (RAE) takes one position, the major feminist organizations another, and parties from PP and Vox to PSOE and Sumar/Unidas Podemos have all made the issue part of their cultural-policy platforms.
This page is descriptive, not prescriptive. It explains how each strategy actually works, who uses it, where you will encounter it, what it sounds like, and what the institutional landscape is. Your job as a learner is to recognize each form, understand its register and political associations, and choose what to produce in line with your own community of practice — not to be told what is "correct."
The grammatical premise: Spanish has obligatory gender
Spanish is a strongly gendered language. Every noun is masculine or feminine; adjectives, articles, pronouns, and most participles agree with that gender. There is no neutral third-gender form in the inherited grammatical system. The traditional rule for mixed groups — the masculine generic — uses the masculine plural to refer to groups containing both genders:
Los profesores de mi instituto son muy buenos.
The teachers at my secondary school are very good. (traditional: includes male and female teachers)
This rule has been challenged on the grounds that it makes women linguistically invisible. The various strategies below are responses to that challenge.
Strategy 1 — Masculine generic (tradicional)
The RAE position: the masculine plural is grammatically unmarked and therefore inclusive of both genders. Los alumnos refers to a mixed group of male and female pupils; los españoles refers to the population of Spain.
Los ciudadanos tienen derecho a votar a partir de los dieciocho años.
Citizens have the right to vote from the age of eighteen.
Register: universally accepted in all formal writing — academic, legal, journalistic, administrative. The default in official documents.
Political associations: politically neutral in itself, but its exclusive use (refusing to consider alternatives) has become associated with conservative positions in the cultural debate.
Linguistic argument: the masculine is "unmarked" in Spanish morphology — it is the form used when gender is irrelevant or unknown (un bebé, el problema, el estudiante). The RAE argues that interpreting los profesores as "only male teachers" is a reading error, not a property of the grammar.
Strategy 2 — Doubled forms (desdoblamiento)
Naming both genders explicitly: los alumnos y las alumnas, trabajadores y trabajadoras, los y las votantes. This was the dominant feminist intervention of the 1990s and 2000s in Spain and remains the most widely-used inclusive strategy in official discourse.
Queremos dar la bienvenida a todos los alumnos y a todas las alumnas del nuevo curso.
We want to welcome all the male and female pupils starting this year.
Los trabajadores y las trabajadoras de la empresa votarán mañana.
The workers (male and female) of the company will vote tomorrow.
Register: common in political speeches, institutional communication, university and ministerial websites, trade-union literature, and formal correspondence from public bodies.
Variants:
- Full doubling: los trabajadores y las trabajadoras
- Compact doubling with shared determiner: los y las trabajadoras (or las y los trabajadores)
- Written abbreviation: los/las trabajadores/as (chiefly in forms and bureaucratic documents)
Doubling that everyone agrees on
There are doubled formulas that have become so conventionalized they fall outside the debate. Damas y caballeros, señoras y señores, hermanos y hermanas are standard regardless of one's position on inclusive language. The political controversy is mainly about doubling as a systematic strategy across every noun in a text, not about set phrases.
Strategy 3 — The @ workaround (only in writing)
Replacing the gendered vowel with the at-sign: l@s alumn@s, amig@s, compañer@s. The @ glyph visually combines an o and an a, signaling "both."
Hola a tod@s, ¿cómo vais con el proyecto?
Hi everyone, how are you all getting on with the project? (typical of email/forum writing from the 2000s)
Register: strictly written; cannot be pronounced. Common in informal email and online forums from the late 1990s through the 2010s, especially in NGO, activist, and university contexts. Has declined in favor of the -e form (Strategy 4) among younger users.
Issues: unpronounceable, inaccessible to screen readers, and unable to handle grammatical inflection beyond the immediate noun (the article los/las still has to be doubled or split). Considered dated in 2026 by many activist communities, though still seen in older publications and some institutional materials.
Strategy 4 — The -e ending (morfema -e)
Creating a new gender-neutral morpheme by replacing the -o/-a contrast with -e: les alumnes, amigues, compañeres, todes. The article los/las becomes les; pronouns él/ella become elle; nosotros/nosotras becomes nosotres.
Bienvenides al taller de escritura. Esta semana trabajaremos en grupos de cuatro.
Welcome to the writing workshop. This week we'll work in groups of four. (-e form, activist/queer register)
Register: strongly marked. Associated with:
- Queer and trans communities, where it serves the further function of providing forms for non-binary speakers.
- Younger left-wing activist circles, especially in universities.
- Some progressive political contexts (occasional use by figures in Sumar, Unidas Podemos).
Origin: the -e form arose in Argentina and the Southern Cone in the 2010s, partly in connection with the Ni Una Menos movement, and spread to Spain. It is not native to peninsular Spanish in the historical sense, but is now part of the active repertoire of certain Spanish-speaking communities.
Institutional position: the RAE has explicitly rejected the -e morpheme as not part of the Spanish language system. The Constitución Española and official legal texts do not use it. Most newspapers and broadcasters do not use it. Yet you will encounter it on social media, in independent publishing, in some university courses, and in the speech of certain politicians and writers.
Le compañere de mi hermane es no binarie.
My sibling's partner is non-binary. (a sentence that only the -e system can produce neutrally)
Strategy 5 — The x and the *
Replacing the gendered vowel with x (lxs niñxs) or asterisk (l*s niñ*s). Even more strongly marked than the -e form, and even less institutional.
Register: academic queer-theory writing, certain activist publications, social media. Unpronounceable in any natural way (some readers pronounce x as "eks" or as "e"). Practically never seen in mainstream peninsular writing.
Argument for x: like @, it visually marks that the binary is being disrupted, but unlike @ it does not visually combine o and a — so it makes no commitment to a male/female pair. This is appealing to those who want to signal non-binary inclusion without producing a new morpheme.
Argument against x: unpronounceable, screen-reader hostile, and overlaps with no native pattern in Spanish. Has lost ground to -e.
The institutional landscape
The RAE
The Real Academia Española has consistently published in defense of the masculine generic and against systematic doubling and the -e/x/@ forms. Key documents:
- Sexismo lingüístico y visibilidad de la mujer (2012, Ignacio Bosque) — a position paper signed by most of the Academia members, arguing that institutional guides to "non-sexist" Spanish often distort the language.
- The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas and Nueva gramática — both treat the masculine plural as the grammatical generic.
- Various public statements by directors (Darío Villanueva, Santiago Muñoz Machado) reiterating that les and todes are not part of the Spanish language system.
The Constitución Española
The 1978 Spanish Constitution uses the masculine generic throughout (los españoles, los ciudadanos, los diputados). A proposed reform to introduce inclusive language has been discussed since 2018 but has not been enacted; in 2020, the RAE was asked by the Vice-Presidency to issue a report on the topic and concluded that no reform was linguistically necessary.
Political parties
The debate has clear partisan contours, though individual positions vary:
- PP, Vox, Ciudadanos — generally defend the masculine generic and oppose systematic doubling and the -e form. Vox in particular has campaigned against inclusive language as a "left-wing imposition."
- PSOE — has institutionalized doubling in much official communication; some PSOE figures use -e, most do not.
- Sumar / Unidas Podemos — supportive of doubling and, in some figures, -e. Both Yolanda Díaz and Ione Belarra have used inclusive forms in speeches.
Autonomous communities
Several autonomous governments (Cataluña, País Vasco, Andalucía in periods) have published their own guías de lenguaje inclusivo for civil servants. These typically endorse doubling and occasionally -e, against RAE advice. The political tension between regional governments and the RAE on this point is real.
Universities
Most Spanish public universities have published inclusive-language guides. The most common recommendation is doubling plus avoidance strategies (e.g. saying el profesorado instead of los profesores — see below). The -e form is endorsed by a minority of guides, mostly recent.
Avoidance strategies (the pragmatic middle path)
Many writers who want to be inclusive but do not want to commit to a controversial morpheme use collective nouns and paraphrase to avoid the gendered choice entirely:
| Gendered | Collective alternative |
|---|---|
| los profesores | el profesorado |
| los alumnos | el alumnado / el estudiantado |
| los ciudadanos | la ciudadanía |
| los trabajadores | el personal / la plantilla |
| los jóvenes | la juventud |
| los votantes | el electorado |
| los lectores | el público lector |
El profesorado del centro se reunirá esta tarde para tratar el nuevo plan.
The school's teaching staff will meet this afternoon to discuss the new plan. (avoids the masculine plural without doubling)
This strategy is widely endorsed by university and ministerial guides because it produces natural Spanish without taking sides on the more contentious -e and @ forms. The RAE itself has noted that collective nouns are stylistically preferable to doubled forms.
What you actually hear and read in Spain in 2026
A realistic snapshot:
- Spoken peninsular Spanish — the masculine generic is overwhelmingly dominant. Doubling is occasional, mostly at the start of formal addresses (alumnos y alumnas, queridos compañeros y compañeras). The -e form is rare outside specific activist or queer settings.
- Newspapers — El País uses doubling in some sections but masculine generic in most; El Mundo and ABC are largely masculine-generic. None systematically use -e or @.
- Political speech — varies by party. PSOE-led ministries tend to double; PP/Vox-led ones use masculine generic; small left parties sometimes use -e.
- Universities — formal communications usually double or use collective nouns; -e in some student-facing materials.
- Social media (younger users) — much more variation, with -e visible especially in queer, feminist, and student-political content.
- Legal and administrative writing — almost entirely masculine generic.
Pronouncing inclusive forms
The pronunciation problem is one of the strongest arguments against @ and x. Here is what is actually pronounceable:
| Written form | Pronounceable? | Typical pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| los profesores y las profesoras | Yes | natural Spanish |
| l@s profesor@s | No | (read aloud as one of the alternatives) |
| les profesores / le profesore | Yes | natural, just with -e |
| lxs profesorxs | No | (read aloud as "eks" or as -e) |
| el profesorado | Yes | natural |
Comparison with English inclusive language
A few useful contrasts for English-speaking learners:
- English singular they has become the dominant non-binary strategy, partly because English has only vestigial grammatical gender. Spanish has no equivalent move available — there is no neutral pronoun in the inherited system, which is why -e was invented rather than re-deployed.
- English forms like chairperson, firefighter, server lexically neutralize a gendered job title. Spanish has some equivalents (la portavoz, el personal docente), but the systematic gender-marking of articles and adjectives means full neutralization at the noun level does not solve the agreement problem.
- The political polarization around inclusive language is more intense in Spain than in most English-speaking countries — the topic is a regular feature of parliamentary debate, opinion columns, and electoral campaigns.
A note on neutrality and accuracy
This page does not endorse any of the five strategies. Each has a real community of users, a real institutional position behind or against it, and identifiable register markers. A C1 learner of peninsular Spanish should be able to:
- Recognize all five strategies on sight.
- Predict who is likely to use which (left activist vs. RAE-aligned vs. ministerial).
- Produce the masculine generic and the doubling strategy correctly — these are the two you will need for academic and professional writing in Spain.
- Decide for themselves whether to adopt -e, @, or x in their personal writing.
What you should not do is import an American or Argentinian inclusive-language playbook wholesale; the peninsular landscape is its own thing, and what is normalized in Buenos Aires (-e is common in much progressive media) is not normalized in Madrid.
Common Mistakes
❌ Todes los profesores [mezclando estrategias]
Incorrect mixing — todes is -e, los profesores is masculine generic. The two strategies are in tension.
✅ Todes les profesores. / Todos los profesores. / Todos y todas.
Pick one strategy and apply it consistently across articles, pronouns, and agreement.
❌ Estimadxs alumnxs, mañana hay clase.
Acceptable in some activist contexts, but inappropriate in formal Spanish from a Spanish institution — the x is unpronounceable and marginal in Spain.
✅ Estimados alumnos y alumnas, mañana hay clase. / Estimado alumnado, mañana hay clase.
Either doubling or a collective noun is institutionally appropriate.
❌ Hola a todos y todas [a un grupo de mujeres]
Pedantically wrong — addressing a group of only women in the masculine first is redundant doubling. Just say todas.
✅ Hola a todas, ¿qué tal lleváis la semana?
When the group is exclusively female, the feminine plural is the natural form.
❌ El nuevo profesor o profesora será nombrado el lunes.
Awkward — singular agreement after doubling produces clumsy text.
✅ La nueva persona docente será nombrada el lunes.
Or use the natural masculine: El nuevo profesor / la nueva profesora será nombrado/a.
❌ Buenos días a todes [en una entrevista de trabajo formal en Madrid]
Register mismatch — the -e form is too politically marked for a formal job interview in most Spanish workplaces.
✅ Buenos días a todos. / Buenos días a todos y a todas.
Use the masculine generic or doubling in formal professional settings unless you know the workplace explicitly uses -e.
Key Takeaways
- Five strategies coexist in modern peninsular Spanish: masculine generic, doubling, @, -e, x. Each has identifiable register and political markers.
- The RAE rejects systematic doubling, -e, @, and x; it endorses the masculine generic and collective nouns.
- Doubling is the most widely-used inclusive strategy in official Spanish institutional writing despite the RAE's view.
- -e is the only strategy that solves the non-binary problem and is the dominant choice in queer and younger activist communities.
- Collective nouns (el profesorado, la ciudadanía) are the pragmatic middle path endorsed by most university guides.
- The debate has clear partisan contours in Spain. Choose your strategy with awareness of register and audience.
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