Present progressive in Spanish: The complete guide – with audio!

• She is studying Spanish
  Ella está estudiando español

The present progressive tense in Spanish is one of the easiest tenses to master. It describes what someone or something is doing right now.

You can use the present progressive to express things like:

• She is cooking the pizza
  Ella está cocinando la pizza

• I am walking to the park
  Estoy caminando al parque

In this article we’ll cover:

• When to use the Spanish present progressive
• Spanish present progressive conjugation
• How to use the Spanish present progressive
  • Regular verbs in the present progressive
  • Irregular verbs in the present progressive
• A note about reflexive verbs
• Practice time
• When NOT to use the present progressive
• Final words
• Answers

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You’ve heard it said before – slow and steady wins the race. So, we’re going to take a relaxed pace through this article to make sure everything is as clear as it can be.

When to use the Spanish present progressive

The Spanish present progressive, also called the present continuous, is used to talk about actions that are happening right now. 

Here’s an example of what we mean by that:

• What are you doing right now? I am reading an article from LingoToGo
  ¿Qué estás haciendo ahora? Estoy leyendo un artículo de LingoToGo 

Spanish present progressive conjugation

In this section, we’ll show you how to conjugate Spanish verbs in the present progressive.

In the Spanish present progressive, all the regular verb conjugations end in “-ando” or “-iendo”. 

Verbs ending in “-ar” in the infinitive always have the “-ando” ending in the present progressive. 

Verbs ending in “-er” or “-ir” in the infinitive always have the “-iendo” ending in the present progressive. 

This makes them pretty easy to conjugate and recognize.

But just to keep you on your toes, there are also irregular verbs that we have to watch out for. But, we’ll cross that bridge a little later. For now, let’s start with the regular verbs.

Regular verbs in the present progressive

Ok, so we’ve spoken a little already about regular verbs. But perhaps you’re scratching your head wondering…

What on earth is a regular verb?

Ok, so let’s jump right to the explanation. In all tenses in Spanish (past, present, and future…) there are regular and irregular verbs. The regular verbs are the ones that maintain the same stem of the verb and you just change the ending.

Now here comes the next question. 

What is “the stem of a verb”? 

Well, that’s the part of the verb before the “-ar”, “-er”, or “-ir” in the verb’s infinitive.

Confused? 

Take a look at the following examples that should clear everything up:

• The stem of the verb caminar is camin-
• The stem of the verb comer is com-
• The stem of the verb vivir is viv-

Better? 

Let’s make it even clearer with some more examples:

-ar verbs use  -ando	-er use -iendo	-ir verbs use -iendo
to walk – walking caminar – caminando	to eat – eating comer – comiendo	to live – living vivir – viviendo
to cook – cooking cocinar – cocinando	to drink – drinking beber – bebiendo	to write – writing escribir – escribiendo

As you can see from these examples, you need to hold on to the “stem of the verb” and then add a present progressive ending.

Piece of cake!

Here’s this portion of Spanish grammar in a nutshell: ing: “ando” or “iendo”

Memorizing things is not easy. But with a little practice, you’ll soon be able to recall these verb endings back to mind in an instant. 

Irregular verbs in the present progressive

Now, we’ve reached the section you’ve been dreading the most. It’s time to talk about irregular verbs. These are the verbs that change the stem of the verb when it is conjugated.

Because they are irregular, they don’t follow a pattern. This makes them take longer to learn. But don’t feel like you have to master them all today. Rather, take just one and study it until you feel confident with it and can move on.

We’ve spent enough time talking about these rebellious irregular verbs. So, it’s now time for us to meet our rivals. Here are the conjugations of the most common irregular Spanish verbs in the present progressive.

English -ing	Spanish -ando / -iendo
to say – saying	decir – diciendo
to feel – feeling	sentir – sintiendo
to sleep – sleeping	dormir – durmiendo
to ask –  asking	pedir – pidiendo
to come – coming	venir – viniendo
to laugh – laughing	reír – riendo

The -yendo ending

There is another set of irregular verbs in Spanish that we like to group together. We call them the “-yendo” irregular verbs. These irregular verbs end in “-yendo” in the present progressive.

There are a number of irregular verbs with this ending. But for the moment, we’ll just take a look at the most common verbs:

English -ing	Verbs  -yendo
to read – reading	leer – leyendo
to go – going	ir – yendo
to bring – bringing	traer – trayendo
to hear – hearing	oír – oyendo
to believe – believing	creer – creyendo

Ok, so when should you use “-yendo” and when should you use “-iendo”? 

There’s a complicated rule that explains when it is necessary to use the “-yendo” ending instead of “-iendo”. But the simple rule is just “because it sounds better”.

Here is a comparison of what the conjugations of irregular verbs would be if they used the regular -iendo ending (incorrect) instead of the -yendo ending (correct). Try saying them out loud.

• Leer
  Liendo (incorrect) 
  Leyendo (correct)

• Ir
  Iendo (incorrect) 
  Yendo (correct)

• Traer
  Traiendo (incorrect) 
  Trayendo (correct)

• Oír 
  Oiendo (incorrect) 
  Oyendo (correct)

• Creer
  Creiendo (incorrect)
  Creyendo (correct)

Did you read them out loud? Go on, go for it!

You’ll notice that the incorrect versions of the verbs are kind of hard to say and they simply just sound strange. You have to practically dislocate your jaw to say the word “creiendo” whereas “creyendo” just rolls off the tongue.

So, the simple rule is that if the regular -iendo conjugation in a verb would sound strange, you should use the -yendo conjugation instead.

But if you’re a by-the-book person, you might still be itching to see the official rule. So here it is: 

“When the stem of the verb finishes in a vowel and also has an irregular form you must use the “-yendo” ending instead of the “-iendo” ending.

That textbook rule is a little wordy and hard to remember. In fact, you’ve probably already forgotten it. That’s why we prefer the rule: “If it sounds really strange with -iendo then use -yendo instead.“

How to use the Spanish present progressive 

Now that you know all the conjugations, using the present progressive in Spanish is super easy. It’s basically the same as English. You just have to conjugate the verb “estar” to match the subject pronoun (I, you, he/she…) and then follow it with the “-ando” or “-iendo” conjugation. 

Here’s an example:

Subject pronoun	Estar	-ando or -iendo
I	am	studying
Yo	estoy	estudiando

Dead simple, right?

Here are more examples showing all the subject pronouns and estar conjugations: 

Subject pronoun	Estar	-ando or -iendo
IYo	amestoy	cookingcocinando
YouTú	areestás	walkingcaminando
He – SheÉl – Ella – Usted	isestá	readingleyendo
WeNosotros – Nosotras	areestamos	bringingtrayendo
YouUstedes – Ellos – Ellas	areestán	drinkingbebiendo

Let’s take a look at some more examples:

• She is cooking the pizza
  Ella está cocinando la pizza

• I can not go out, it is raining
  No puedo salir, está lloviendo

• I am walking to the park now
  Yo estoy caminando al parque ahora

• Look! The dog is playing with the cat
  ¡Mira! el perro está jugando con el gato

• We are going to your house right now
  Nosotros estamos yendo para tu casa ahora mismo

• Ana is not studying now, she is sleeping
  Ana no está estudiando ahora, ella está durmiendo

• What are you doing Juan?
  ¿Qué estás haciendo, Juan?

• Are you coming to my house now?
  ¿Estás viniendo para mi casa ahora?

A note about reflexive verbs

When it comes to reflexive verbs, you can place the reflexive pronoun (me, te, nos, se) before the estar part of the sentence or after the end of the -ando/-iendo verb. 

Now that was a bit of a mouthful. So, let’s take a look at some examples that show both ways a reflexive verb can be conjugated in the present progressive:

• Look! Ana is waking up now 
  ¡Mira! Ana se está despertando ahora
  ¡Mira! Ana está despertándose ahora

• I am washing my hands
  Yo me estoy lavando las manos
  Yo estoy lavándome las manos

Both versions of these sentences mean the same thing. That means you can choose which one you want to use when talking. It’s best to learn one until you feel confident with it before you move on to learning the other.

When having conversations, you’ll hear both, so it’s important you get round to studying them.

Practice time

Now it is your turn to practice.

Fill in the blanks with the Spanish present progressive in each sentence.

Here’s an example of how the exercises work: 

Question:

• Juan is walking in the park
  Juan ______ (caminar) en el parque

Answer:

• Juan está caminando en el parque

So here we go. Fill in the blanks with the Spanish present progressive:

1. I am reading the newspaper
   Yo _____________ (leer) el periódico

2. They are eating pasta at the Italian restaurant
   Ellos _______________ (comer) pasta en el restaurante Italiano

3. We are writing a letter for the teacher
   Nosotros _______________ (escribir) una carta para el maestro

4. What are you doing right now?
   ¿Qué ______________ (hacer) ahora mismo?

5. Are you cooking all the food?
   ¿_________________ (cocinar) toda la comida?

6. Are you all traveling to Spain together?
   ¿______________ (viajar) a España juntos?

7. I am washing my hands
   _______________ (lavar) las manos

8. Luis is not coming to the party right now
   Luis ______________ (venir) a la fiesta ahora mismo

9. I am studying Spanish on LingoToGo
   Yo ______________ (estudiar) español en LingoToGo

10. I am not studying Italian, I am studying Spanish now
    Yo ____________ (estudiar) Italiano, yo ______________ (estudiar) español ahora

Note: The answers are at the end of the article.

When NOT to use the present progressive

Just a quick word of caution before we wrap up.

When a Spanish sentence in the present progressive tense is translated into English, the English verb always ends in “-ing”, such as in the words cooking, walking, doing, and reading. 

So, it would be easy to think that it should work the same the other way around – that any sentence in English that has a verb ending in “-ing” should be translated into Spanish using the present progressive tense.

You can see where we’re going with this and have rightly guessed that this isn’t the case.

Let’s take a look at some examples of these anomalies:

• “I’m going to get up early tomorrow” is translated using the near future tense in Spanish
  Voy a despertarme temprano mañana

• “I like reading” is translated using the infinitive in Spanish, more like “I like to read“
  Me gusta leer

So, don’t think of the present progressive as translating all verbs in English that end in -ing. Rather, you should think of it as a way to talk about things that are happening right now.

Final words

That was a rundown of everything you need to know about the present progressive tense in Spanish. 

So, what’s next? 

Practice!

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Answers

Here are the answers to the questions in this Spanish present progressive

1. I am reading the newspaper
Yo estoy leyendo el periódico

2. They are eating pasta at the Italian restaurant
Ellos están comiendo pasta en el restaurante Italiano

3. We are writing a letter for the teacher
Nosotros estamos escribiendo una carta para el maestro

4. What are you doing right now?
¿Qué estás haciendo ahora mismo?

5. Are you cooking all the food?
¿Estás cocinando toda la comida?

6. Are you all traveling to Spain together?
¿Están viajando a España juntos?

7. I am washing my hands
Me estoy lavando las manos / Estoy lavándome las manos

8. Luis is not coming to the party right now
Luis no está viniendo a la fiesta ahora mismo

9. I am studying on LingoToGo
Yo estoy estudiando español en LingoToGo

10. I am not studying Italian, I am studying Spanish now
Yo no estoy estudiando Italiano, yo estoy estudiando español ahora

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