If English speakers had to summarise Spanish capitalisation in one sentence, it would be: Spanish capitalises less than English does. Words that you would automatically write with a capital in English — Spanish, Monday, January, Catholic, the Internet — go in lowercase in Spanish: español, lunes, enero, católico, internet. Once you internalise this, your written Spanish will instantly look more native, and you will stop tripping over the small handful of cases where capitalisation actually is required.
The big rule: lowercase by default
In English, certain categories of word are capitalised purely because of what they are: nationalities, languages, religions, days, months, and many other "proper-noun-adjacent" categories. Spanish reserves capitals for a narrower set: proper names, sentence beginnings, and a few institutional/formal uses. Everything else is lowercase, including categories where English instinct will scream at you to capitalise.
Lowercase in Spanish (uppercase in English)
These are the categories that catch English speakers out. Memorise the principle, not the list — the pattern is consistent across all of them.
Nationalities and languages
The adjectives and nouns of nationality, ethnicity, and language are always lowercase in Spanish.
Soy español, vivo en Madrid y trabajo como ingeniero.
I'm Spanish, I live in Madrid, and I work as an engineer.
Hablo inglés con mi madre y francés con mi padre.
I speak English with my mother and French with my father.
En la oficina hay alemanes, italianos y dos chicas argentinas.
In the office there are Germans, Italians, and two Argentine women.
The countries themselves are proper nouns and stay capitalised: España, Inglaterra, Alemania, Argentina. The nationality adjectives and the languages do not.
Days of the week and months
Both are lowercase, no matter where in the sentence they appear.
El lunes empiezo el curso de yoga.
On Monday I'm starting the yoga course.
Mi cumpleaños es el catorce de enero.
My birthday is on the fourteenth of January.
En agosto Madrid se queda medio vacía porque la gente se va a la playa.
In August Madrid empties out because everyone goes to the beach.
Same goes for seasons — primavera, verano, otoño, invierno — all lowercase.
Religions, religious followers, and beliefs
Mi vecina es católica, pero su marido es ateo.
My neighbour is Catholic, but her husband is an atheist.
El budismo y el hinduismo son religiones milenarias.
Buddhism and Hinduism are religions thousands of years old.
Note: names of religious figures and sacred texts often keep capitals: Dios, la Biblia, el Corán. The followers and the system of belief do not.
Political and ideological labels
Mi tío es socialista, mi tía es conservadora, y aún se llevan bien.
My uncle is a socialist, my aunt is a conservative, and they still get on.
The names of political parties as institutions do capitalise: el Partido Socialista Obrero Español, el Partido Popular. But the adherents (socialistas, populares) and the ideologies (el socialismo, el conservadurismo) stay lowercase.
Job titles and ranks (when used generically)
El presidente del Gobierno ha convocado elecciones para junio.
The Prime Minister has called elections for June.
Mi padre es profesor de instituto y mi madre es médica.
My father is a secondary-school teacher and my mother is a doctor.
This one has some flexibility — institutional or ceremonial use can take a capital (el Rey, el Papa), but everyday descriptions of someone's job do not.
Where Spanish does capitalise
The categories that take capitals are smaller and more predictable than in English.
Personal names and place names
Like every alphabetic language: María, José, Carmen, Pablo Picasso, Almodóvar; Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, la Sierra Nevada, el Mediterráneo.
El próximo verano vamos a recorrer Andalucía en coche.
Next summer we're driving around Andalusia.
Note that articles inside place names lowercase unless they are part of the official name: el río Ebro (lowercase el) but El Salvador (uppercase, it is part of the country name).
Brand names and proper nouns of products
He cambiado mi iPhone por un móvil Samsung.
I've swapped my iPhone for a Samsung phone.
(Peninsular vocabulary: móvil is the standard word for mobile/cell phone in Spain, not celular.)
Institutions, organisations, and official titles
Estudié Filología Hispánica en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
I studied Spanish Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid.
El Ministerio de Sanidad ha publicado nuevas recomendaciones.
The Ministry of Health has published new recommendations.
When an academic subject is used as a degree title, it capitalises (Filología Hispánica). When it is just a school subject in everyday speech, it lowercases (estudiamos historia y matemáticas).
Acronyms and initialisms
These behave like English: all caps, no periods. ONU, OTAN, UE, BOE, IVA, RAE, PSOE, PP, EE. UU. (yes, with a space and periods — that is the official RAE form for Estados Unidos).
El IVA en España es del 21 % en la mayoría de productos.
VAT in Spain is 21% on most products.
Sentence beginnings
Standard, as in any alphabetic language. The wrinkle: a sentence that begins with an inverted question or exclamation mark still starts the actual word with a capital.
¿Cuánto cuesta esto?
How much does this cost?
¡Qué frío hace hoy!
It's so cold today!
The C of Cuánto and the Q of Qué are capital because the sentence starts there, not because of the ¿ or ¡ marks.
Titles of works: only the first word + proper nouns
This is one of the biggest visual differences between Spanish and English text. In English, you might capitalise most of the significant words in a title: One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Metamorphosis, A Hundred Years of Solitude. In Spanish, you capitalise only the first word and any proper nouns that appear inside.
| English style | Spanish style |
|---|---|
| One Hundred Years of Solitude | Cien años de soledad |
| The Metamorphosis | La metamorfosis |
| Don Quixote of La Mancha | Don Quijote de la Mancha |
| The House of the Spirits | La casa de los espíritus |
| The Society of Snow | La sociedad de la nieve |
| The Disappearance of the Stars | La desaparición de las estrellas |
Acabo de terminar Cien años de soledad y me ha dejado tocada.
I just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude and it left me deeply moved (tocada is colloquial in Spain for 'emotionally affected').
¿Has leído La metamorfosis de Kafka?
Have you read Kafka's The Metamorphosis?
The same rule applies to films, songs, articles, and chapters — only the first word and proper names take capitals.
El otro día vimos El laberinto del fauno en versión original.
The other day we watched Pan's Labyrinth in the original Spanish.
Notice in Don Quijote de la Mancha: Don Quijote is a name (capital), de la is a connector (lowercase), and Mancha is the place (capital).
Capital letters keep their accents
A persistent myth: that uppercase Spanish letters do not take accent marks. They do. Both the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy) and the Asociación de Academias have repeatedly clarified this. The myth comes from old typewriters and early word processors that could not easily place accents above capital letters.
ÁFRICA ES UN CONTINENTE ENORME CON CINCUENTA Y CUATRO PAÍSES.
Africa is an enormous continent with fifty-four countries.
The Á in ÁFRICA keeps its accent. So does the Ú in ÚLTIMO, the É in ÉTICA, and the Í in ÍNDICE. Headlines, signs, and book titles that drop the accent are technically incorrect, even if you see it often in the wild.
Numbers, dates, and addresses
A small handful of formatting quirks:
- Dates are written day month year: 14 de enero de 2026. The month is lowercase.
- Decades are written in numerals or words, both lowercase: los años setenta, los 70.
- Centuries are written in roman numerals plus siglo: el siglo XXI. Siglo is lowercase.
- Years four digits or longer used to take a punto as the thousands separator, but the current RAE recommendation is to write them as plain digits without separator: 1492, not 1.492. For non-year numbers in formal writing, the punto is still standard (or a space): 1.000 or 1 000.
- Decimals: a comma, not a point: 3,14, not 3.14.
La Constitución española se aprobó en 1978.
The Spanish Constitution was passed in 1978.
El piso cuesta 250.000 euros, una cifra que sigue subiendo.
The flat costs 250,000 euros, a figure that keeps rising.
Capitalisation in dialogue
In Spanish dialogue, the speech attribution after a dash does not capitalise even if it follows a complete sentence.
—No tengo ni idea —dijo Marta encogiéndose de hombros.
'I have no idea,' Marta said, shrugging.
The dijo stays lowercase because grammatically it is still part of the same sentence as the speech. Only if the attribution clearly ends and a new sentence begins do you go back to a capital.
How this differs from English
The differences are not arbitrary — they reflect a different theory of capitalisation:
- English capitalises by category: any word that "names" something (a language, a day, a religion, a nationality) gets a capital, because it is treated as a proper name.
- Spanish capitalises by uniqueness: only words that pick out a specific, named individual (a person, a place, a brand, a titled institution) get a capital. Categories of thing — languages, peoples, days, months — are common nouns, so they are lowercase.
Once you absorb that principle, the rules stop feeling like a list of exceptions and start feeling like a single consistent system. English has a more aggressive capitalisation policy; Spanish has a more restrained one.
El próximo martes celebramos el cumpleaños de mi hermana, que cumple treinta y dos.
Next Tuesday we're celebrating my sister's birthday — she's turning thirty-two.
In English, Tuesday would carry a capital. In Spanish, martes does not. That single contrast captures most of what you need to remember.
Common mistakes
❌ Yo soy Español y hablo Inglés y Francés.
Incorrect — nationalities and language names are lowercase in Spanish.
✅ Yo soy español y hablo inglés y francés.
I'm Spanish and I speak English and French.
❌ Mi cumpleaños es el quince de Marzo.
Incorrect — month names are lowercase.
✅ Mi cumpleaños es el quince de marzo.
My birthday is on the fifteenth of March.
❌ El Lunes tengo cita con el médico.
Incorrect — days of the week are lowercase.
✅ El lunes tengo cita con el médico.
On Monday I have a doctor's appointment.
❌ Acabo de leer Cien Años De Soledad.
Incorrect — in Spanish titles, only the first word and proper nouns capitalise.
✅ Acabo de leer Cien años de soledad.
I've just read One Hundred Years of Solitude.
❌ AFRICA ES UN CONTINENTE FASCINANTE.
Incorrect — uppercase letters keep their accents.
✅ ÁFRICA ES UN CONTINENTE FASCINANTE.
Africa is a fascinating continent.
Key takeaways
- Spanish capitalises fewer words than English. The default is lowercase.
- Lowercase: nationalities (español), languages (hablo francés), days (lunes), months (enero), seasons (invierno), religions (católico), ideologies (socialista), generic job titles (profesor).
- Uppercase: personal names, place names, brand names, the names of institutions (la Universidad Complutense), acronyms (ONU, IVA), and sentence beginnings.
- Titles of works capitalise only the first word and any proper noun inside (Cien años de soledad, La metamorfosis).
- Capital letters keep accents (ÁFRICA, ÉTICA, ÍNDICE).
- Dates: day first, month lowercase (14 de enero de 2026). Decimals: comma. Thousands: punto in formal numbers; no separator for years (1492).
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