Localizing for Spain: Castilian, Catalan and the regions.
Spain has one national language and four co-official ones, six broadly distinct commercial cultures and a strong instinct for detecting content written for somewhere else. Localization here is a positioning decision, not a translation line item.
Localization is where foreign entrants most often mistake a cheap decision for a small one. Translating a site into "Spanish" appears to solve the language problem and quietly creates three new ones: the wrong variety of Spanish, the wrong register for the audience, and complete silence in regions where a co-official language is part of how commerce is conducted.
None of this requires a company to speak four languages. It requires deciding, deliberately, which audiences matter and what each one needs to hear — and then producing content natively rather than converting it.
Castilian is not one Spanish.
The most frequent and most damaging error is serving Latin American Spanish to Spain, usually because a single "Spanish" version was commissioned for both markets. The differences are not subtle to a native reader: vocabulary, verb forms of address, punctuation conventions, currency and payment references, and an overall register that signals the content was written for somebody else.
One Spanish for every Spanish-speaking market
Latin American vocabulary and forms of address, dollar references, unfamiliar payment terminology, and phrasing that a peninsular reader recognises as imported within a sentence or two.
Peninsular Spanish, written natively
Spain-specific vocabulary and register, euro pricing with VAT handled the way Spanish buyers expect, references to local institutions and payment methods, and copy drafted by someone who sells here.
Spain uses informal address far more readily than Latin America.
Consumer brands addressing Spanish audiences with unrelenting formality sound stiff and institutional; the same copy in some Latin American markets would read as correct. Register is a market decision, and it should be made explicitly rather than inherited from a translator's default.
The co-official languages, and when they matter commercially.
Everyone in Spain understands Castilian, so no audience is unreachable without the regional languages. The question is not comprehension but signalling: in the bilingual communities, using the local language is read as evidence that you are a participant in that market rather than a vendor selling into it from outside.
| Language | Where | Commercial weight | Worth investing when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Castilian | Nationwide | Essential | Always — the baseline for every audience |
| Catalan | Catalonia, Balearics | High | Consumer brands, public-facing services, local B2B in Catalonia |
| Valencian | Valencian Community | Medium | Consumer and institutional work; closely related to Catalan |
| Galician | Galicia | Medium | Local retail, services and institutional relationships |
| Euskara | Basque Country, Navarre | Medium | Consumer and public-facing work; industrial B2B often runs in Castilian |
A pragmatic sequence for entrants: publish everything in peninsular Castilian first; add the co-official language on the pages that carry the relationship — homepage, key landing pages, contact — in the one region you are actually targeting; and expand only if that region works. Half-translated sites, where some pages switch language and others do not, are worse than a consistent Castilian site.
What localization covers beyond words.
A site can be linguistically flawless and still read as foreign. The signals below are the ones Spanish users register without articulating, and most of them are cheaper to fix than the copy.
- Dates as day/month/year and the 24-hour clock where times are shown
- Decimal comma and thousands point — a price written the other way is instantly foreign
- Euro pricing with VAT treatment stated, and prices shown VAT-inclusive to consumers
- Address fields for Spain — provincia, codigo postal, local ordering
- Spanish phone format and a number that is actually answered
- Local payment methods at checkout, including Bizum where relevant
- Holidays and hours reflecting the regional calendar, not a generic one
- Imagery that could plausibly be Spain — stock photography of the wrong country is noticed
- Terms and returns under Spanish and EU consumer law, not a foreign template
Six commercial cultures, not one.
Native copy convinces further when the company is actually here.
A Spanish SL with a NIF, address and bank account turns good localization into credible localization — established remotely, as one file.
Do we need to translate the whole site into Catalan?
Can we use machine translation with human review?
Is it risky to ignore the co-official languages?
Should our brand name or tagline be translated?
Next in the cluster.
Correct Spanish is not the same as Spanish written for Spain.
Book a free call ↗Alexander Baranov
Seventeen years designing and delivering cross-border corporate structures — incorporation, tax, banking and market entry — for founders expanding into Spain and the EU. Author of professional books on entering and selling in the Spanish market.
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