What does “Nochevieja” mean in Spanish?

Nochevieja is New Year’s Eve — literally “old night,” the last night of the old year. It pairs with Nochebuena (“good night”), which is Christmas Eve, so Spain’s two big December evenings are each named by a single adjective: buena for the 24th, vieja for the 31st. It is written as one word and capitalised like a holiday, and it is the everyday way to say the date in Spain: la cena de Nochevieja.

Celso spells it out mid-story: la noche del 31 de diciembre se conoce como Nochevieja, then walks through la cena de Nochevieja at ten at night and las campanadas at midnight. Notice what people actually say once the clock strikes: not “feliz Nochevieja” but ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! — Nochevieja names the evening, Año Nuevo is the greeting. The word is standard across the Spanish-speaking world but is most at home in Spain; in much of Latin America you’ll more often hear fin de año or simply Año Nuevo for the same night. The “old” image still travels, though: in Ecuador and Colombia families burn an effigy called the Año Viejo at midnight to send the old year off.