Precio de la gasolina y viajes en el Día de los Caídos
B1 Spanish listening practice · Mexican Spanish · Curated for intermediate learners
How do you say “Memorial Day” in Spanish?
In US Spanish-language media, the late-May US holiday Memorial Day is el Día de los Caídos — “the Day of the Fallen” — honoring soldiers who died in service, and the long weekend is el fin de semana de los Caídos. It is a calque, a phrase translated piece-by-piece from English, and a clean example of how Spanish in the United States coins its own civic vocabulary that you will not hear the same way in Spain or Latin America.
The newsreader pairs it with classic US-news Spanish: galón for gallon, millas for miles, la triple A for AAA, and a dollars-and-cents gas price read aloud. Caer literally means “to fall,” and los caídos — “the fallen” — is the same dignified euphemism English uses for the war dead.