Resources for learning Spanish

I have been learning Spanish for a few weeks now and during that time I've collected a few resources that I found useful. Some of them are already good for me as a begginner, the other are mostly for when I start to know more.

Some I have not tried myself but might be useful for you.

Duolingo is a web site and a mobile app with which you can learn many different languages including Spanish. These days I commute to work. About 40 min by train twice a day. It could be a lot of wasted time but I spend a lot of it using Duolingo. Once in a while I also check my progress on Duome

Spanish with Alma is a YouTube channel for beginner Spanish students. I know Alma González as she is also a teach on Italki. She also has a web site called Spanish with Alma.

italki is a web site and a mobile application through which you can find chat partners for free or teacher for a reasonable price. The fun part is that the other person can be from the other side of the world. Once you found the partner/teacher you conduct your online meetings via Skype or some other, similar too. Prices for teachers seem to range between $4-$80/hour depending on the language, the location of the teacher, and I guess how much they value themselves. I found a teacher from Spain. (This is an affiliate link. As I understand if you use to sign up we'll both get some credit.)

I heard LanguaTalk is a nice alternative for finding teachers, but I have not tried it yet.

Podcasts / mp3 files

You can listen to these either by using your web browser or by a podcast listener. (I use Podcast Addict as I've explained in my list of technical podcasts.

Ben and Marina from Notes in Spanish are great. You can download the episodes free of charge. They are just mp3 files and listen to them while commuting or while doing your other things that don't need your full attention. You can also buy the worksheets. The Inspired Beginner series can be understood after juts a few days or weeks of learning Spanish. They have tons of explanations in English and then they speak in Spanish.

Beatriz and Reyes from Podcast in Spanish are fun. These are 2-minutes long conversations in Spanish only. They speak very fast, but if you listen to the same episode 4-5 times you start to understand the individual words and after a few weeks (or maybe months) of learning Spanish about 1 hour a day you can start understand them.

Unlimited Spanish by Òscar Pellus. In every episode he takes a subject and teaches words and expressions around that subject. After 4-6 month of learning Spanish I've started to understand him. I love this podcast!

Duolingo Spanis podcast - the epsiodes are mixing English and Spanish and cover interesting personal topics.

News in Slow Spanish has short free episodes and longer ones for which you have to pay.

Hoy Hablamos is a great podcast by Roi Bolás and Paco.

Books

There are plenty of books (and e-books) written especially for beginners. Some of them are categorized using the CEFR catagory system. So if you are beginner you can pick books that are marked as A1.

Juan Fernández (who also has YouTube videos) has a bunch of books for Spanish learners called Historias cortas para estudiantes de español. In addition he has a few courses to learn Spanish.

The books of Juan Fernández:

Hola Lola A1
Un hombre fascinante A1/A2
La profe de español A2
Año nuevo, vida nueva B1
Me voy o me quedo? B1
Fantasmas de Pasado B1
Una chica triste B2Historia del año B2

I also liked the Spanish books of Paco Ardit.

Olly Richards has books in several languages

If you use Kindle, you can also buy a Spanish dictionary and then you can highlight a word in the book you are reading and get a translation.

Youtube

PRACTIQUEMOS by Catalina Moreno E. I love the way Catalina teaches.
Español con Juan is also really nice.
Why not Spanish with Maria and Cody.
Maria Español.

In this video Juan suggests a number of other channels:

and collected from the comments on that video a few more fun channels in Spanish

Curiosidades con Mike
Espanol Automatico
Destinos y Mas
Reydama (about Chess)
Liry Onni
RankingTen - Moises Green
Paola Hermosín playing the guitar
Rockandplay Daniel about playing music
Spanish with Vicente
Juan Villalvazo Programming
Genial
Irving and Vale Two Venezueliand in Spain

Music

There are tons of songs in Spanish and the lyrics is available all over the Internet. I've created an account on Spotify, but I guess you can find tons of songs in other channels as well.

Telenovela

Extra in Spanish is a telenovela especially for beginners. It is very cheesy, but it is fun.

Señora Acero is another telenovella. It was a bit too difficult for me when I tried it.

Destinos

Dictionary / Translator

I use Google Translate and the same application that has an off-line version so I can also use it when my train is in a tunnel.

Reading the news or listening to the news

It is still very difficult for me and I hardly understand anything, but here are a few:

In person events

Duolingo has a platform called Duoling events that allows you or other to organize in-person meeting among people who learn the same language. I became an ambassador for Duolingo in Spanish and English. (A volunteer to organize events.)

Meetup is a generic platform to organize events. I found two language related groups near-by, but neither of them really fit my needs due to their schedule so I created my own. Lunch in Spanish/English in Tel Aviv. There are two other groups I found near-by: The Tel Aviv Cool Language Exchange and the Language Learning in Tel Aviv that hosts the events. I have not attended either of those, but they both look fun.

You might find a group near where you live.

Speaking

I think one of the most difficult parts is to start to talk in Spanish. I have mentioned several possibilities: italki, Duolingo events, Meetup events.

Other

Audio books

Telemundo Entretenimiento. Especially Suelta la sopa.

Listen to the radio: There are various apps for mobile phones that allow you to listen to radios from all over the world. There are tons of Spanish channels to listen to. I personally use Tune In.

Watching movies in Spanish in Netflix (or elsewhere).

Verbos en español is a rather easy text explaining the verbs in Spanish.

Shortcut to Spanish by Marcus Santamaria

Technical blogs (in Spanish)

Overreacted by Dan Abramov has a Spanisgh version.
Some of the articles on Perl Maven by yours truly were translated by some other nice people to Spanish
Reddit in Spanish
Many Reddits in Spanish