Verbos reflexivos: levantarse, ducharse, irse

If you want to describe what you did this morning in Spanish, you cannot avoid reflexive verbs. Getting up, showering, getting dressed, brushing your teeth, sitting down, leaving the house — almost every step of a daily routine uses a reflexive verb in Spanish where English would use a plain transitive or intransitive one. This page collects the highest-frequency reflexive verbs in peninsular Spanish, conjugates a model verb in full (including the vosotros forms that Latin American materials omit), and covers the one weird wrinkle of peninsular Spanish: the affirmative vosotros imperative that drops its final -d before the reflexive pronoun (levantaos, not levantados).

Before reading on, make sure you understand the basic reflexive paradigm and the five functions of se — they're on the reflexive pronouns overview page.

The model verb: levantarse in full

Levantarse is the classic teaching example: high-frequency, regular -ar, and clearly reflexive in meaning. Master this paradigm and you have the template for hundreds of other reflexive verbs.

Present indicative

Preterite, imperfect, present perfect

Note the placement of the pronoun in the compound tense: it goes before haber, never between haber and the participle. He me levantado is ungrammatical.

Imperative

The imperative is the form most likely to trip you up, because peninsular Spanish has a quirky rule for the affirmative vosotros. We'll cover it in detail below.

The vosotros imperative quirk

This is one of the few rules in Spanish where Spain does something noticeably weirder than Latin America. To form the affirmative vosotros imperative of any verb, you replace the final -r of the infinitive with -d: hablar → hablad, comer → comed, salir → salid. So you'd expect levantar to give levantad, and with the reflexive pronoun attached levantados.

But it doesn't. In peninsular Spanish, the affirmative vosotros imperative drops the final -d before the reflexive pronoun os:

• Levantar → levantad
  • os → levantaos (NOT levantados)
• Sentar → sentad
  • os → sentaos
• Callar → callad
  • os → callaos
• Ducharse → duchad
  • os → duchaos

The only exception is irse, which keeps the d: idos. (The colloquial form iros is by far the more common one heard in everyday Spain, and the Real Academia accepted it as valid in 2017, alongside the prescribed idos. Use either — iros will sound more natural in casual speech.)

The negative vosotros form is regular: no os levantéis, no os sentéis, no os calléis. The quirk applies only to the affirmative.

The high-frequency reflexive verbs

These are the reflexive verbs you'll meet first and use most. Group them in your head by domain — daily routine, emotions, movement — and learn them in chunks.

Daily routine (the morning loop)

Movement and position

Emotions and mental states

These are mostly inherent reflexives — the -se is part of the verb's identity, not a literal "to oneself" meaning.

Reflexive with body parts and clothing

When the action is done to a part of one's own body or to one's clothing, Spanish uses the reflexive pronoun + definite article — not a possessive:

The logic: the reflexive pronoun already tells you whose body part or clothing it is, so the possessive would be redundant. English uses the possessive ("I wash my hands") because it has no equivalent reflexive marker. This is one of the most persistent transfer errors in Spanish.

Common mistakes

The last error is the single most persistent reflexive mistake among English speakers — even at B2 / C1 levels, learners produce me lavo mis manos before catching themselves. Drill the article-not-possessive pattern with body parts and clothing until it becomes automatic.

Key takeaways

• Reflexive verbs are listed in the dictionary with -se: levantarse, ducharse, irse. To conjugate, drop the -se, conjugate normally, and add the matching reflexive pronoun.
• The peninsular os form (with vosotros) is mandatory: os levantáis, os ducháis, os vais.
• The affirmative vosotros imperative drops its -d before reflexive os: levantaos, sentaos, callaos, duchaos. The only standard exception is idos (from irse).
• With body parts and clothing, use the definite article + reflexive pronoun (me lavo las manos), not the possessive.
• Many verbs change meaning when made reflexive: ir / irse, dormir / dormirse, poner / ponerse, acordar / acordarse, quedar / quedarse — learn the pairs.