Spanish: An Essential Grammar

Note: If the qualifier forms part of a country’s name the article is not used: Irlanda

del Norte‘Northern Ireland’.

In addition, there is a tendency nowadays, especially amongst journalists,

to drop the definite article before the names of countries that previously

were preceded by it. This is particularly the case with masculine names:

(el) Brasil (el) Canadá (el) Ecuador (el) Irak

(el) Japón (el) Pakistán (el) Paraguay (el) Uruguay

Still bucking this trend are: el Perú(at least in the country itself), el Congo,

el Líbano ‘Lebanon’ and la India.

In general, countries whose name is a descriptive title still retain the article:

los Países Bajos the Netherlands el Reino Unido the United

Kingdom

el Salvador El Salvador la (República) Argentina

Argentina

On the other hand, Gran Bretaña‘Great Britain’ and Arabia Saudí‘Saudi

Arabia’ appear to have lost the article.

With los Estados Unidos(or EEUU) ‘the United States’, the article is gener-

ally omitted. When this is done an accompanying verb is used in the

singular: Estados Unidos apoya la última decisión‘The USA supports the

latest decision’.

Omission of the definite article with names of cities, regions and

continents

As with countries (see 3.2.2.1) in general the article is not used unless the

name is qualified:

Vive en Barcelona. She lives in Barcelona.

la Barcelona de Gaudí Gaudí’s Barcelona

Some place names, however, contain a definite article that forms an inte-

gral part of the name, written with a capital letter in the case of towns and

cities. Examples are:

La Habana Havana La Coruña Corunna

El Callao Callao La Mancha La Mancha

3.2.2.2

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1011

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Definite and
indefinite
articles

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