A Complete Guide To The Spanish Imperative

¡Escúchame! If you want to learn Spanish to fluency, study long and hard. Take it from me: I've been through the learning process many times and I know how hard it is.

But what’s important is that you never lose focus. So leave your excuses at the door and concentrate on this lesson I’m about to give you.

Did you see what I did there? I just gave you orders, advice and a recommendation. How? With the Spanish imperative! In this article, you'll learn all about this essential grammar topic, including:

• What the Spanish imperative mood is
• How to use it in Spanish
• The imperative with reflexive verbs
• The imperative with direct and indirect objects
• And many key examples!

¡Comencemos! 

If you prefer watching videos to reading, (and you'd like to learn the imperative in Spanish through story) hit play on the video below from the StoryLearning Spanish YouTube channel. Otherwise, keep scrolling to find out all about the Spanish imperative.

What Is The Imperative In Spanish?

The Spanish imperative is what we call a verbal mood. Mood is what lets us express our attitude toward what we are saying.

The sentence Tú te llamas Amalia (Your name is Amalia) is a fact about yourself, about reality. Because of that, I used the indicative mood.

If Amalia’s mother said Ojalá te hubiésemos llamado Florencia (I wish we had named you Florencia), she uses the subjunctive because she's expressing regret.

However, if Amalia’s mother said Cámbiate el nombre (Change your name), that's neither a fact or a regret, but an order. So that’s when the imperative mood comes in handy.

In short, the imperative (imperativo) is a nuance of meaning we create with the verbs we use that helps us give orders or advice, and also make recommendations or direct requests.

In Spanish, this mood is very common in everyday conversation, so you have to learn it if you want to feel more comfortable with your speaking skills. 

The good news is that it shouldn't be too tricky to get the hang of, especially if you follow the rules of StoryLearning and learn Spanish by reading. So ignore the grammar villain and let's jump in!

How To Conjugate The Imperative In Spanish

Affirmative Imperative

How do you make an imperative sentence in Spanish? Let’s start with the most frequent subject: tú.

To give an order to someone using tú, you’ll need the conjugation from the indicative mood that corresponds to the third person singular, that is él or ella.

For example:

• Él ama → Tú ama → Ama a tu familia (Love your family)

By the way, I have a separate post if you need a refresher on Spanish verb conjugation.

If you speak Spaniard Spanish, you’ll have to use vosotros and vosotras to address more than one person. The imperative conjugation is really easy: you just have to swap the “r” at the end of any verb in the infinitive for a “d”, like so:

• Amar → Vosotros/as amad → Amad a vuestras familias (Love your families)

However, if you're learning Latin American Spanish, you'll need the pronoun ustedes. To use this pronoun, you might want to revise the present subjunctive in Spanish, because that’s what you'll use to make the imperative, like in this example:

• Amar → Ustedes amen → Amen a sus familias (Love your families)

The Spanish imperative also works with the pronouns usted and even nosotros! Lucky for you, these also need the present subjunctive to work:

• Amar → Usted ame → Ame a su familia (Love your family)
• Amar → Nosotros amemos → Amemos a nuestras familias (Let’s love our families)

Here’s a chart with all the regular, affirmative conjugations:

Needless to say the imperative only appears when addressing other people directly, so that’s why the third person is excluded entirely. But what about the pronoun yo?

Well, the Spanish imperative doesn’t have a conjugation for the first person singular, only for the plural one. I mean, you don’t normally give orders to yourself, right? And if you do, you do it as if you were another person, with the pronoun tú.

For example, if you're sitting an exam and you're panicking because you don’t know the answers, you might say to yourself ¡Vamos concéntrate! (Come on, concentrate!). 

Another key thing about the imperative is that, just like in English, the subject is omitted most of the time. This means that a mum wouldn’t say to their children Ustedes coman su comida (You eat your food), but simply Coman su comida (Eat your food).

Going back to the chart, I said this only applies for regular verbs, so what happens with the irregular ones? Here’s a list to ease your mind and for you to learn:

Negative Imperative

One thing to keep in mind when using the Spanish imperative mood is that it only appears in affirmative sentences. However, if you want to give negative commands like “Don’t leave the house”, you'll use the present subjunctive every time:

Here are some example phrases:

• ¡No tengas miedo! (Don’t be afraid!)
• No coman el postre antes de la cena. (Don’t eat dessert before dinner.)
• ¡No hagáis ruido! Esto es una biblioteca. (Don’t make noise! This is a library.)

More Spanish Imperative Sentences

Next up, let’s see some example imperative sentences you can find in Spanish:

Orders And Instructions

• Corte los tomates en cubos y ralle las zanahorias. (Cut the tomatoes into cubes and grate the carrots.)
• ¡Alto ahí y ponga las manos en el aire! (Stop right there and put your hands in the air!)
• No dejen un zapato sin pulir. (Do not leave a dish unpolished.)

Proposals And Requests

• Cierra las cortinas, por favor. (Close the curtains, please.)
• Vengan a cenar a casa el viernes. (Come home for dinner on Friday.)
• ¡No vayamos a la playa! No me gusta el mar. (Let’s not go to the beach! I don’t like the sea.)

Words Of Advice

• No te cases joven. (Don’t get married young.)
• ¿Tienes dolor de garganta? Toma un poco de sopa. (Do you have a sore throat? Have some soup.)
• Usa un tapado si hace frío. (Wear a coat if it’s cold.)

The Spanish Imperative With Reflexive Verbs

If you don’t remember or don’t know how reflexive verbs work, you can check out this full explanation on the StoryLearning Spanish YouTube channel or in this article about Spanish reflexive verbs.

In the imperative mood, reflexive verbs are formed differently depending on whether the sentence is affirmative or negative.

In the affirmative, the verb and the reflexive pronoun are joined; in the negative, however, you need to place the pronoun between the no and the verb, like so:

Here are the rules you need to follow to master reflexives in the imperative mood:

• Affirmative: verb in the imperative + reflexive pronoun (added to the end of the verb)
• Negative: no + reflexive pronoun + verb in the present subjunctive

Good news – the regular affirmative conjugation is almost exactly like the one you saw above, plus the corresponding pronoun. The only difference is with vosotros and vosotras because you need to remove the “d”!

Keep an eye out for irregular reflexive verbs in the affirmative: the conjugations are similar to the other irregular verbs you’ve seen, but you may find some tweaks, so you may need to look up particular verbs you want to use.

Here are some examples:

• Lávate los dientes, hijo. (Brush your teeth, son.)
• ¡No os durmáis tarde! (Don’t go to sleep late!)
• Póngase el uniforme. (Put on your uniform.)

Spanish Imperatives With Direct And Indirect Objects

Another tricky case is when you want to come up with an imperative sentence but you need to include a direct object (DO) or indirect object (IO).

If you don’t quite remember how these grammar topics work, you can check out this video about the Spanish DO and another one on the Spanish IO on our YouTube channel.

Thankfully, the direct and indirect objects that appear in imperative sentences have little effect on the way we would use a normal sentence in this mood. These sentences are also very similar to the ones you saw in the reflexive verbs section. 

Direct Object (DO)

If you say Come tus vegetales (Eat your veggies), tus vegetales would be the DO. The negative version of this phrase would be No comas tus vegetales.

However, if you don’t want to mention the DO, you could replace it with the pronoun los.

The affirmative sentence would be Cómelos (combining the two words and adding an accent mark), whereas the negative one would be No los comas (placing the pronoun between the no and the verb).

Here are some examples: 

• ¿Quieres mi chocolate? Cómelo, no tengo hambre. (Do you want my chocolate? Eat it, I’m not hungry).
• ¿Te gusta esa chica? No la invites a salir, tiene novio (Do you like that girl? Don’t ask her out, she has a boyfriend).
• ¿Quieres comprar este reloj? No lo compres, es de mala calidad (Do you want to buy this watch? Don’t buy it, it’s of poor quality).
• ¿Ves esas sillas? Muévelas a un costado, por favor (See those chairs? Move them to the side, please).
• No me beses, estamos en público (Don’t kiss me, we are in public).

Indirect Object (IO)

Let’s begin with an example: Pide unos dulces para tu hermanito (Ask for some candy for your little brother). Can you tell which part is the DO? Unos dulces.

What about the IO? That would be para tu hermanito, because this person is not directly involved in the action, but he will benefit from it.

We also know para tu hermanito is the IO because it begins with the preposition para and because we can replace these three words with the pronoun le. This is how it would look:

• Affirmative: Cómprale unos chocolates (Buy her some chocolates)
• Negative: No le compres unos chocolates. 

Just like with the DO affirmative sentences, the verb and the pronoun are joined, but in the negative ones, they stay separate.

Here are more examples:

• Cántame una canción. (Sing me a song.)
• ¡Cuéntanos un cuento, papá! (Tell us a story, dad!)
• Dígale la verdad, señor. (Tell him/her the truth, sir.)

So far so good? Good, because what I’m about to tell you may complicate things a bit:  the DO and the IO can be replaced in the same sentence at the same time AND while using the imperative mood!

For example, in the sentence Canta esa canción para mí (Sing that song for me), the DO is esa canción and the IO is para mí.

Now, in order to replace both objects at once, you can either say Cántamela (or No me la cantes, if you wanted to come up with the negative version). In this case, the IO comes in first and then the DO.

However, there’s a catch: whenever you want to do a double replacement with a third-person DO and IO (singular or plural), the pronoun le or les from the IO turns into se.

For example, in the sentence Di la verdad a tu madre (Tell your mother the truth), you have to say Dísela, not Dílela. This is just a question of Spanish pronunciation, nothing more: the two “L” sounds are difficult to pronounce, so it was changed.

This also happens when we make a negative sentence, like in No se la digas.

Here are more examples:

• ¿Le contaste la noticia a tu hermana? ¡Cuéntasela! (Did you tell your sister the news? Tell her!)
• ¿Tienes un lápiz? Préstamelo, por favor. (Do you have a pencil? Lend it to me, please.)

Spanish Imperative Mood Explained

And that’s a wrap on the Spanish imperative mood!

That was quite a lot of grammar to digest in one go. So don't expect to become a Spanish imperative superhero overnight.

Instead, immerse yourself in Spanish using the StoryLearning method. As you read books in Spanish or Spanish short stories, you'll see the Spanish imperative over and over.

As you come across it in reading, it'll quickly start to become second nature and you won't need to “study” it.

And if you need a little help to master the Spanish imperative and any other aspects of Spanish grammar, my course, Spanish Uncovered, teaches you them through stories, not rules. Click here for a free 7-day trial.

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.