La puerta no quiere abrirse.

In this sentence, querer is being used idiomatically, not literally. Spanish often uses querer + infinitive with things to express that something is being difficult or refuses to cooperate.

So La puerta no quiere abrirse means something like:

• The door won’t open
• The door doesn’t want to open

It is a kind of personification, just like in English when we say My car won’t start. The car has no real will, but the sentence suggests resistance.

Because abrirse here means to open in the sense of to become open, not to open something.

Compare:

• abrir = to open something
  
  • Abro la puerta = I open the door
• abrirse = to open / to come open
  
  • La puerta se abre = The door opens

In La puerta no quiere abrirse, the subject is la puerta, and the idea is that the door itself is not opening. That is why the pronominal form abrirse is used.

Here, se does not mean that the door is literally doing something to itself on purpose. This is not a truly reflexive idea like He washes himself.

Instead, se is part of the verb form abrirse, which is often used for things that open without saying who opens them. It gives the sense of:

• to open
• to come open
• to open up

So in this sentence, se helps make abrir work in an intransitive or middle-voice way: the door is the thing undergoing the action.

Yes. That is also correct.

With a conjugated verb plus an infinitive, pronouns like se can often go in two places:

• before the conjugated verb: La puerta no se quiere abrir
• attached to the infinitive: La puerta no quiere abrirse

Both are natural. The meaning is the same.

What you cannot do is put se in the middle like this:

• La puerta no quiere se abrir — incorrect

The meaning is basically the same. Any difference is mainly about style, rhythm, or what sounds more natural to a speaker in that moment.

Both mean:

• The door won’t open
• The door doesn’t want to open

Learners should understand and be able to use both patterns.

Because the subject is la puerta, which is singular.

• la puerta = singular
• therefore quiere = singular

If the subject were plural, then you would use quieren:

• Las puertas no quieren abrirse = The doors won’t open

Yes, it usually feels a bit more expressive.

Compare these:

• La puerta no se abre = The door doesn’t open / isn’t opening
• La puerta no quiere abrirse = The door won’t open

The version with quiere often suggests resistance, difficulty, or frustration. It can sound more colloquial and more like something a person would say in real life when struggling with the door.

Word for word, it looks close to that, yes:

• La puerta = the door
• no quiere = does not want
• abrirse = to open itself / to open

But that is not the best natural translation. The normal English meaning is:

• The door won’t open

So this is a good example where the literal structure and the natural meaning are not exactly the same.

Because Spanish normally uses an article with nouns like this.

• La puerta = the door

In a real situation, it usually refers to the door already understood from context, so the definite article is natural.

Spanish often uses the definite article where English might sometimes say:

• the door
• my door
• that door

depending on context. But here la puerta is the normal basic way to say it.

Yes, you might hear that, and people would understand it. But La puerta no se abre or La puerta no quiere abrirse is often more natural for this meaning.

Very roughly:

• La puerta no abre = more direct, simpler
• La puerta no se abre = the door does not open
• La puerta no quiere abrirse = the door won’t open, with a sense of resistance

The sentence with quiere sounds especially natural when you are physically trying to open it and it is stuck.

Yes. This kind of sentence is very natural in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking places too.

Using querer with objects to mean that they are not cooperating is common colloquial Spanish. Similar ideas are:

• El coche no quiere arrancar = The car won’t start
• La ventana no quiere cerrar = The window won’t close

So La puerta no quiere abrirse is a normal and useful everyday pattern.