It should be noted that not all of their videos can be viewed outside Spain, but many of them can.  It seems that, with the exception of news, the more recent a show is the more likely it is to not be available outside Spain.

News

Documentaries

Additionally, they offer a ton of great documentaries, which you can see via the preceding link or by clicking “Documentales” in the menu at the top of their site.  All of the ones I’ve seen so far include a transcript (verbatim of what’s said) on the right hand side of the video screen (note that you can click on a piece of dialogue there and it’ll skip the video to it).  The thing with these is that they’re not all available outside of Spain.  What I think the pattern is here, is that all the more recent stuff (3 months? 6 months? I have no idea, something like that) is restricted to

One I’m watching right now that’s a lot of fun (and available to everyone and has Spanish subtitles) is Los colores del jamón (“The colors of the ham”), which is about jamón in Spain.

Drama

Two that I’m partial to are Isabel and Carlos, Rey Emperador, both historical fictions (I like those because you learn a lot of Spanish history while you’re at it).  Both of these offer Spanish subtitles, though again the same thing I said above about the more recent episodes not being available outside Spain yet seems to apply here as well.

Other

I’m really not into reality shows so I can’t comment on those, but I do know that Masterchef, for one example, is extremely popular in Spain right now.

They have a whole area called Recetas (“recipes”) for you cooks out there.  Note the little menu at the top where it says “Recetas   Programas” – “recetas” are just the recipes (you can have Google Translate help you out by just coping and pasting the URL into Google Translate and it’ll translate the whole page for you, or even better you can use Readlang to learn

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:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

Hi guys, today I’ve got a guest post from Alberto Horihuela, who’s the head of business development over at Drama Fever, currently one of the few legal sites for watching full episodes of Spanish-language telenovelas in the United States (I just recently added Drama Fever to my very popular List of Best Free Sites to Watch Spanish-Language TV Online).  He contacted me because they had noticed that a growing percentage of their members were people who were using their service for the express purpose of learning the language that the TV show was in and he knew that was a method that I advocated.  They currently have several telenovelas available on their site–full episodes, for free–and they all have English subtitles available; I asked him if they had considered doing Spanish subtitles and he said that it was being considered, so let’s hope that happens.

Today he’s going to write about something very related to their service and the method that I advocate, that is learning a language tacitly versus explicitly.  Have a look.

The Tacit Approach to Learning Languages

Have you noticed how people who move to other countries tend to learn the language faster than those who studied it from their home countries? Intuitively, it isn’t hard to see how the constant exposure to a new language in day-to-day interactions would push one to learn faster. However, educational science tells us that it is more than just increased exposure, but also the method of exposure. Indeed, the improved rate of learning comes largely from the use of tacit vs. explicit knowledge creation.

Think of tacit knowledge as intuition – it is knowledge we already have or acquired through past experiences, yet we are unable to easily explain it. It’s what we have learned through observation, practice and repetition – think about knowing how to ride a bike, or more relevant, your own native language. You may not necessarily know the ins and outs of it, but you know what sounds right and how to speak it. Explicit knowledge on the other hand is what you learn from studying facts, policies, and rules, i.e. your typical classroom learning experience. Not surprisingly, language learners tend to focus most of their energy developing explicit knowledge, while those who learn a language in a foreign country develop a more extensive tacit knowledge drawn from exposure to television and day-to-day interactions.

That is the reason why most will tell you that watching foreign television is a great way to learn a language. Short of taking a long break and moving to another country, the best (and most amusing) way to throw yourself into a new culture is through the local entertainment they produce, which reflects the language, traditions and customs of a region. An immensely useful example is watching a traditional Spanish telenovela to practice listening comprehension and absorb the elaborate yet necessary colloquialisms. It’s no coincidence that this is the method recommended by many, including the great Telenovela Method we’ve formerly advocated.

If you live in the US, you may already have access to the Latin TV channels such as Univision. Or, if you’d rather watch from your computer, you can find telenovelas in YouTube or streaming platforms such as DramaFever, which subtitles full telenovelas from Latin American and Spain.

Nonetheless, we are not saying it’ll be easy: the tacit learning method requires active engagement and participation, not mere memorization. But it pays dividends! Auditory learning is more organic, babies learn languages by simply listening to the flow of dialogue and drawing logical connections. While you’re no longer a baby (we presume) your learning process will be somewhat similar. By watching telenovelas you’ll be listening to real dialogue, not perfectly annunciated Spanish, which will strengthen your listening abilities in real situations.

That being said, don’t toss your books yet – the best learning method is one which effectively combines traditional explicit learning with tacit knowledge creation – after all knowing the difference between what sounds right and what is actually right can save you a moment of mild embarrassment. Go ahead, enjoy some telenovelas and let us know cómo te va!

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:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando

Cheers,
Andrew

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:

ATC Canal 7 – TV Publica

Canal 4 San Juan

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)

El Trece

Canal 26 (scroll down to “videos destacados”)

CMTV (Music videos, TONS of stuff on here)

Zona 31

TN 24 Horas

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)

Iquique Canal 10

Television Nacional de Chile

UCV Television

TV Senado

Colombia

Canal CNC

Caracol TV

Señal Colombia

Costa Rica

Canal 13

Extra Canal 42

Teletica 50

Cuba

Telesur

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)

Cubasi

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)

Colorvision

TRA 45

Vega TV

El Salvador

Agape TV Canal 8

Canal 21 Megavision

Guatemala

Canal Antigua

Honduras

Canal 6

Mexico

Televisión Educativa de Mexico

Canal 44

Canal 5 XEJTV

Canal de Congreso

Groupo FM Television

Canal 53 UANL

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”)

Once TV

Multimedios TV (scroll down to “Videos más recientes”)

TV Acapulco

TeVe de Mente

Nicaragua

Canal 2 TV

Canal 15

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…)

Pacifico Television 41 UHF

RBC TV

Puerto Rico

CDM Internacional

Senado TV

SBN

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.

CRTVG – Galicia TV

Cervantes TV

Cetelemon TV

KISS TV

LDTV

M95 TV

Popular TV (to get the live feed click “Emisión en Directo” in the menu bar at the top)

Solidaria TV

Sintonía Televisión Rioja

Telemagik

Telemadrid (nice clean setup, fast load, recommended)

Ferrol Canal 31

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

Univision

Telemundo

Almavision

DominicanYork (hover over “Videos” in the top toolbar and select a section)

V-me

Estrella TV

Azteca America (scroll down to the “Video” section)

LATV (tons of videos on here)

MTV Tr3s (Music videos – MTV owns them)

Mexicanal

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

Teledoce

Venezuela

ANTV Live Feed

ANTV Video Archive

Globovision (click “Señal en vivo” in the menubar at the top)

Promar TV

VTV (click either “Señal en vivo” or “Videos” in the menubar at the top – by the way, this is the official government TV station)

RCTV

TeleSUR TV

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:

1. Spanish-speaking YouTubers who are excellent for intermediate Spanish practice (not lessons, intended for native speakers, great for improving listening comprehension).
2. 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…

Here’s La Tortura with lyrics

And Inevitable

Ciega, Sordomuda

Antes de las Seis

Suerte

Te Aviso, Te Anuncio

Ojos Así

And for the Juanes fans there are a ton, including…

A Dios Le Pido

Y Es por Ti

Fotografía

…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…

https://www.lyrics.com/

https://www.azlyrics.com/

http://www.songlyrics.com/

https://genius.com/

http://www.metrolyrics.com/

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/

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?)

About.com’s got a short list…

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:

Beeline TV

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:

• Amazon
• iBooks (the iTunes store)
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble
• Google Play Store
• Goodreads
• Scribd
• Ciando