Today I’m going to give you a list of my favorite websites that you can use to help you learn Spanish via watching television in Spanish (news, shows, telenovelas, whatever), almost all of which are entirely free. I’ve divided it up alphabetically by country. This list is mainly intended for people learning Spanish, which I think is wonderful since it’s how I learned Spanish and what I recommend others do as well. Here we go…oh, and if any of these links are dead or you know of a site that I left off please leave a comment and let me know, I’ll fix it, I promise – which reminds me, I just want you to know that I actually checked each one of the sites below to make sure that they were working and actually had streaming video available, unlike every other list of Spanish language TV/radio station sites I’ve managed to find online (all of them had links to broken sites, all of them). Additionally, if you have a particular Spanish TV show you’d like to recommend, definitely tell us!
The best website for Spanish-learners who want to use Spanish TV shows, movies, and cartoons to learn Spanish from:
If this is you, check out Yabla for Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles and so much more. This is a fantastic website and my top recommendation if you’re looking for Spanish videos to learn Spanish with. I emphasize the last part because that’s specifically and solely what this site is designed for, and it’s the only one on this list that is solely intended for that purpose. What they do is take Spanish-language media that was originally produced in Spanish-speaking countries and intended for native speakers (TV shows, movies, news casts, cartoons, documentaries, etc.) and then integrate them into a whole Spanish-learning interface they have that allows you to see word-for-word Spanish subtitles and their English translation at the same time (you can turn either or both off while watching the video), plus you can click on any word in the subtitles and it will automatically pull up the definition in the dictionary next to the video player as well as add that word to your flashcards for later review. They also include a vocabulary learning game, quizzes, and a flashcard system that’s very easy to use and all on the same page as the video you’re watching.
Also, I did a whole extensive review of Yabla here that I recommend you check out if this sounds like something that might interest you, plus you can just go on over to their site and try out the free demo videos. Oh, and they do provide volume discounts for educators and organizations.
Spanish TV Channels Sorted by Alphabetically by Country
Ok, let’s get started. I’ve sorted the list of Spanish TV channels below by country and included short bits of pertinent information where appropriate.
Argentina:
Canal 5 Tucuman (a little disorganized but there are tons of videos on there you can watch)
Canal 6 TV (good one, lots of videos of recent news events)
Canal 26 (scroll down to “videos destacados”)
CMTV (Music videos, TONS of stuff on here)
Aruba
Teleruba (click on “Teleruba Live!” in the menu bar at the top)
Bolivia
Costas (look under “videos noticias” in the middle of the page there)
Chile
Canal 54 LivTV (click “Ver Señal Online” and it should load up a streaming video player)
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cuba
TV Marti (based out of Miami but it’s entirely targeted at a Cuban audience hence its inclusion under the “Cuba” section instead of the “United States” section)
Dominican Republic
Bonao TV Canal 12 (requires VLC player to view, which I highly recommend you get anyway, it’s the best video player out there)
Yuna Vision Canal 10 (same story, requires VLC)
El Caribe (scroll down and look on the right where it says “Transmisión en vivo”)
CDN (really nice, simple setup, video player works great)
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Televisión Educativa de Mexico
Sistema de Radio y Televisión Mexiquense
RTV de Vercruz (click on “Televisión en Línea”)
Grupo Fórmula (scroll down to “Noticias en Video”)
SinTesis TV (click on “TV en vivo acqui”)
Multimedios TV (scroll down to “Videos más recientes”)
Nicaragua
Peru
Bethel Television (look to the right where it says “Señal en vivo” and choose either low or high quality)
JN19 (I hope you like Jesus…)
Puerto Rico
Wapa TV (not available in the U.S.)
TelemundoPR (scroll down to where it says “videos”)
Spain
RTVE (tons of videos, the news includes a transcript that usually shows up about 24 hours after it’s published on the site). I use this site more than any other to watch television in Spanish, personally: please see my post about RTVE here for more information and show recommendations.
Popular TV (to get the live feed click “Emisión en Directo” in the menu bar at the top)
Telemadrid (nice clean setup, fast load, recommended)
Congress TV (live feed of Congress, Parliament, and archives – menu is on the left)
Informativos Telecinco (videos are all down the right-hand column of the page)
RTPA (live feed is on the right)
United Kingdom
BBC’s Spanish Language TV Section – Just awesome, includes Spanish programs from the BBC with downloadable transcripts (!!) as well as Spanish language news and TV shows, absolutely worth checking out.
United States
DominicanYork (hover over “Videos” in the top toolbar and select a section)
Azteca America (scroll down to the “Video” section)
LATV (tons of videos on here)
MTV Tr3s (Music videos – MTV owns them)
HITN TV (educational programming)
Drama Fever (this was submitted by a commenter, if you’ve got one not on the list please let me know–thanks, Carlos!)
Uruguay
Venezuela
Globovision (click “Señal en vivo” in the menubar at the top)
VTV (click either “Señal en vivo” or “Videos” in the menubar at the top – by the way, this is the official government TV station)
Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime (tons of Spanish TV shows now)
I mention these on my other list, which is of sites where you can watch Spanish videos but which also have Spanish subtitles (great if you’re learning Spanish), and I’m putting this here as well because some of the shows/movies from these providers have subtitles in Spanish, some of them do not, it just varies. So…
Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu. I’m grouping them all together because…well, they’re pretty much all the same thing (type of service), aren’t they? Anymore, for me, Netflix, YouTube, and RTVE are where I’m getting all my Spanish-language content (and a bit on Instagram, too).
I’m not familiar with Hulu at all so I can’t comment (those who are, please do comment, below, in the comments), but I have both Netflix and Amazon Prime and…Netflix wins handily. It’s no-contest. Amazon’s offerings in general are not as good as Netflix (I really only watch The Grand Tour there), nowhere near as good in fact, and this is doubly so in their foreign-language selection: go with Netflix.
Now, that said…what Netflix movies and series can I recommend here and now? Several!
- Narcos (and now, Narcos Mexico) – it’s about the drug war, obviously. The original series was set in Colombia during the 1980s and 1990s and dealt with Pablo Escobar, the Medellin Cartel, and then the Cali Cartel. The new one about Mexico I couldn’t tell you about because I haven’t seen it. Subtitles are available in both Spanish and English. Spanish is mainly spoken but you get a repreive every now and then when the DEA agents are on-screen and they speak English. The Spanish is, obviously, almost entirely Colombian, mostly Paisa dialect since it’s largely based in and around Medellin. Wikipedia (Narcos) | Rotten Tomatoes (Narcos) | IMDB (Narcos) | MetaCritic (Narcos).
Wikipedia (Narcos Mexico) | Rotten Tomatoes (Narcos Mexico) | IMDB (Narcos Mexico) | MetaCritic (Narcos Mexico). - La Casa de Papel – This is about a robbery of the Spanish mint. I’ve only seen the first episode but it does look really good and is very highly recommended elsewhere. The Spanish is Iberian (Spanish from Spain). Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDB | MetaCritic doesn’t have an entry for it.
- El Club de Cuervos. A Mexican comedy-drama web TV series. The story centers on the football club Cuervos FC, based in the fictional city of Nuevo Toledo, Mexico, and the power struggle that follows the death of its long-time owner and patriarch. Wikipedia | IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes.
- El Tiempo Entre Costuras. The story of a woman who became a spy against the Nazis and their allies in WWII. Wikipedia | Rotten Tomatoes | IMDB. It should be noted this series is based on a highly acclaimed book by the same title.
- El Gran Hotel. Mystery Drama in a nice, old hotel. Per Google: “Set in Spain in the early 20th century, Julio arrives at a luxury hotel to meet his sister, head chambermaid Cristina only to discover she has disappeared. Julio makes it his mission to find her and infiltrates the hotel under the guise of a footman.” Wikipedia | IMDB.
We really must move on. I’ve many more but I think what I’ll do is make a separate post out of that list and then link it here later. Stay tuned (subscribe, please!).
YouTube!
First of all, I have a whole category dedicated to this called Learn Spanish on YouTube: Recommended Channels, How to Do It, Lessons Based on YouTube Videos. Additionally, and within that category, I maintain two separate lists of YouTube channels I recommend for learning Spanish, one of channels that are explicitly intended to teach Spanish and another of channels in Spanish but which are intended for native speakers (and therefore really only for intermediate and advance students). Here they are:
- Spanish-speaking YouTubers who are excellent for intermediate Spanish practice (not lessons, intended for native speakers, great for improving listening comprehension).
- YouTube Channels that Teach Spanish.
Each of these lists includes a sample video from each channel that I believe illustrates what they’re about as well as a short description of the channel, this way you can decide whether or not you’re interested without having to click a link to each channel (as you would if I just had a list of links here, which is what this used to be).
Music Videos
I can’t possibly list every single Spanish-language music video that includes the lyrics, but I will give you some examples and then show you how you can obtain the lyrics for nearly any other one that you want even if the video doesn’t include them.
Of course I have to throw in some Shakira videos…
And for the Juanes fans there are a ton, including…
…and many more, just search YouTube for “Juanes letras” (“letras” is Spanish for “lyrics”, and you want to search in Spanish because of course you want the Spanish lyrics not an English translation which is what will frequently come up if you say “lyrics” instead of “letras”).
Also, there’s at least one YouTube channel devoted to publishing Spanish-language videos with their lyrics contained therein expressly for people learning Spanish, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more (tell us in the comments if you know of others).
Where to find lyrics for nearly any song
There are several popular lyrics look-up sites that have lyrics for nearly every song that’s ever been even somewhat popular (English, Spanish, French, etc., doesn’t matter). Check out…
Radio
This list was already really long with just sites that had streaming TV (a lot of them also have streaming radio, by the way), I didn’t want to make it any longer or prolong publishing it any more by trying to put together an inevitably equally long list of Spanish-language radio stations’ sites, so I’ve cheated a bit and just put links to other people’s lists of such sites where you can listen to Spanish-language radio below. Again, I can’t vouch for how many of the links on the below listed sites actually work, but most of them should be good-to-go at the very least.
Multilingualbooks.com’s list of Spanish-language radio stations with live feeds online
E-Spanyol’s list of 600 Spanish-language radio station sites categorized by country (see why I didn’t want to try to do a list here?)
Live-TV-Radio.com’s got a good-sized list organized by country
Other Languages
Unlike the above list, I can’t vouch for whether or not all the TV stations’ sites listed on the sites below work or not. If you’re looking for TV stations you can watch online in languages besides Spanish, check out:
Multilingualbooks.com’s Foreign Internet Television page
wwiTV.com – Biggest compilation I’ve seen yet, truly impressive.
If you’re here because you’re learning Spanish…
…and you haven’t already checked out my list of sites where you can watch Spanish videos with Spanish subtitles or transcripts, I highly recommend you do so because having the Spanish that’s spoken on-screen written down for you (either in the form of subtitles or an attached transcript) will help you enormously when it comes to learning that Spanish. Why? Because how else are you going to be able to look up what you don’t know? When you hear a word or a phrase you don’t understand, unless you’re a fairly advanced student you’re not going to be able to write it out and if you can’t do that then you can’t look it up. Having an English translation is just having a clue as to what was actually said, it doesn’t explicitly tell you and therefore is nowhere near as good.
I keep these lists separate for that exact reason: because having Spanish subtitles is so important. Obviously, if you don’t have them that’s still far better than nothing (or maybe you’re advanced enough that you don’t need them), but I just wanted you all to be aware of this. This is the list of video sources that generally don’t offer Spanish subtitles (Yabla is an exception).
Related Resources
An excellent course that would probably interest you if you’re just getting started in Spanish and want to focus on learning how to speak it with perfect pronunciation, that relies on immitating native speakers in the sort of media that’s on this list, is called The Mimic Method, specifically their “39 Elemental Sounds of Spanish”. Check it out, try it, let me know if you like it.
Lastly, it just so happens that I wrote a book about precisely how to learn Spanish, on your own, from the kind of popular media above! It’s called The Telenovela Method and is available on Amazon, Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, and Goodreads (also, your local bookstore should be able to order a copy if you like). The e-book version is about $7.99 and the paperback is about $14.99 (varies a bit by retailer). It’s about how to use popular media of your choice (movies, TV shows, music, books, news, etc.) to learn Spanish on your own. It’s centered almost entirely around online resources, the overwhelming majority of which are free (those that aren’t are very inexpensive and not necessary). I called it The Telenovela Method because the popular media I initially used to learn most of my Spanish about nine years ago was telenovelas (that’s what soap operas are called in Spanish) because they were just about the only thing I could find that, occasionally at least, included subtitles in Spanish. You don’t need to use telenovelas, no, pick what appeals to you.
Conclusion
Like I said in the introduction, if you’ve got any additional sites that I missed or any of the above links stop working, please let me know in the comments as this page will be continuously updated to keep it current, also… If you thought the above was at all useful and you want to learn (or are learning) Spanish, please give me a chance and read what I have to say about my book below! Thank you so much for checking out my blog and I hope you’ve enjoyed my writing.
Cheers,
Andrew
I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too
I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free. It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average. It’s available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).
It’s currently available in both e-book and paperback from:
