Special thanks to Dr. Omanyte from the PA! Discord for his work on this! I’ve always wondered about the differences between Latin American Spanish and Peninsular Spanish, especially growing up in California and the varities of Spanish spoken here, so his work on what the difference between the two versions has been super helpful. I hope it’s helpful for you as well!
The Actual News:
On January 9, 2025, the Pokémon TCG expansion “Journey Together” was announced¹, with a planned released for March 28, 2025¹. On the same day, TPCi also announced that their plan to introduce a new language to Pokémon TCG: Latin American Spanish. In other words, with the release of “Journey Together”; there’ll be trading cards written in both Peninsular Spanish (Spain) and Latin American Spanish (the Americas)!
Why did TPCi decide to release Pokémon cards in Latin American Spanish? Afterall they sell the same American English cards in places like the UK, Australia and New Zealand: where they eat lorries, drive crisps and drink bo’ohw’o’wo’ers. Despite we don’t have a 100% official answer, we can deduce the possible reasons. In recent years, the Spanish Pokémon community has complained about Peninsular Spanish (Spain) translations for main Pokémon games being overloaded with local expressions. In other words, the games were full of phrases that could only be fully understood by people from Spain, and some words can be taken out of context due to having different meanings and can potentially ruin the gameplay experience. These differences between Spain and Latin America are far FAR greater than American and British English, as English is usually limited to either words coined in once place but not the other yet the context could still make sense (color/colour, gas/petrol, “pants”, etc) or rude words (which would never appear in a Pokémon game to begin with). Therefore, it only made sense to finally create a version of Pokémon suited for Latin American Spanish.
So is the first time there was a difference? Kinda: regarding the Spanish-language Pokémon TCG, Latin America had some presence in the past such as Base Set cards—where there were versions for Spain and Latin America; the differences between them could be detected in the Copyright info—or HGSS Unleashed boxes—where the amount of boosters were different between Spain and Latin America, and for some reason the Latin American version lacked Reverse Holo cards. However, none of these examples mentioned before involved a massive change regarding card texts and names of Trainer cards. As such, “Journey Together” is the first expansion that is going to do this!
For example, it will be the first expansion that is going to have a different name in both Spain and Latin America:
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- Spain: Juntos de Aventuras ²
- Latin America: Aventuras Compartidas ³
TPCi presented a Sprigatito card³ in both Spanish versions to underline the differences:
Let’s break down the differences!
Both cards are Sprigatito 016/159. However, there are some differences regarding Spain and Latin America versions ⁴ ⁵.
Name of attacks: Name of attacks are different between both versions.
- Spain: Sinfín de Pisadas
- Latin America: Pisaditas sin Fin
Expansion Symbol: The expansion symbol has the following structure ⁵
- Spain: SET CODE + ES
- Latin America: SET CODE + LA
Height/Weight data:
- Spain uses commas “,” for Height & Weight data ⁵
- Latin America uses points “.” for this data ⁵.
Pokédex description: Pokédex descriptions between both versions are technically the same, but expressed with different words:
- Spain: Su sedoso pelaje se asemeja en composición a las plantas. Se lava la cara con diligencia para que no se le seque.
- Latin America: Su sedoso pelaje tiene una composición similar a la de las plantas. Se lava la cara con diligencia para que no se le seque.
These seem minor, but they make a major difference for Spanish-speaking players worldwide!
Trainer Cards
The biggest change between the two Spanish versions will be for Trainer cards. TPCi has indirectly confirmed the name of some Trainers and their Pokémon for both Spanish versions.
Text from the website of “Juntos de Aventuras” (Pokémon Spain)⁷:
Brindándoles confianza plena y guiándolos con destreza, los Entrenadores son capaces de sacar lo mejor de sus Pokémon. Ese vínculo que comparten los impulsa a combatir al unísono, llevando sus fuerzas al límite, ¡incluso cuando se trata de Pokémon ex! Únete al Zoroark ex de N, al Bellibolt ex de e-Nigma, al Clefairy ex de Lylia, al Zacian ex de Paul y a muchos otros Pokémon de Entrenadores, ¡y descubre el imparable poder de la amistad en la expansión Escarlata y Púrpura-Juntos de Aventuras de JCC Pokémon!
Text from the website of “Aventuras Compartidas” (Pokémon Latin America)⁶:
Mediante la confianza plena y una dirección firme, los Entrenadores ayudan a sus Pokémon a sacar lo mejor de sí. Ese vínculo que comparten los impulsa a combatir al unísono, llevando sus fuerzas al límite, ¡incluso como Pokémon ex! Únete al Zoroark ex de N, al Bellibolt ex de e-Nigma, al Clefairy ex de Lillie, al Zacian ex de Paul, entre muchos otros Pokémon de Entrenadores, ¡y descubre el incomparable poder de la amistad en la expansión Escarlata y Púrpura-Aventuras Compartidas de JCC Pokémon!
| English | Spain⁷ | LatAm⁶ |
| N | N | N |
| Iono | e-Nigma | e-Nigma |
| Lillie | Lylia | Lillie |
| Hop | Paul | Paul |
To sum up, the names in Latin America version are a mix between English and Spanish (Spain) names⁶.
Possible Changes (Unconfirmed):
With the introduction of Latin American Spanish, there might be some changes for nomenclature and others:
- Energy names: Pokémon GO started to call some Pokémon types differently. For example, Fighting type (Tipo Lucha) is called “Tipo Pelea” and Bug type (Tipo Bicho) is called “Tipo Insecto” in Latin American Spanish of Pokémon GO. Something similar might be applied to Trading Cards and might change Energy cards and the nomenclature we were accustomed to.
- Pokédex Data: Some categories from specific Pokémon might be different for Latin America; we’ve already seen that the Pokédex entries themselves are different.
Journey Together won’t be released for a couple months, so we can only speculate on what changes will actually be made. But when it happens, we’ll let you know!
Why did TPCi decide to release Pokémon cards in Latin American Spanish?
As mentioned above, the differences between Latin American Spanish and Peninsular Spanish are significant, far more than the differences between British and American English. So much so that there has been an intense debate regarding Latin American Spanish for main Pokémon games. A perfect example is this moment in Pokémon Diamond & Pearl where a Team Galactic grunt says:
“Los que los pierden deberían dejar de llorar y coger más.”
In Peninsular Spanish—which is what DPP was translated into—the word “coger” simply means “to grab/take”. In this case, they’re saying “Those who lose them should stop crying and take more.” (the English version says “Trainers that lose theirs should quit whining and catch some more!”) However, in Latin American Spanish, “coger” has a very rude slang meaning, changing the Team Galactic grunt’s to something closer to “Those who lose them should should crying and f*** more.” As you can imagine, this would be a shock to any Latin American kid trying to play the game!
Because of situations like this, several people have asked TPCi to include this language in their games. It went so far that even the Latin American voice actors of Ash Ketchum & Brock joined the cause and released a video explaining the problem of Pokémon in Latin America⁸!
Thankfully, TPCi started to include Latin American Spanish to Pokémon games starting with Pokémon GO and Pokémon TCG Live… and it’s now available on the physical Trading Card Game. These game releases using Latin American Spanish surely was a direct consequence of all people asking TPCi for a Latin American Spanish translation in their games and the debate surrounding that. Hopefully TPCi might apply this language to the main video games soon.
Another possible reason for the introduction of Latin American Spanish is the low presence of Spanish TCG cards in Latin America itself. For example, in Peru it’s way more common to find English cards than Spanish cards; although Spanish cards can be found to some extent, local people prefer to buy, sell and trade English cards because it’s more acceptible. And because English cards are more commercial, Spanish cards are harder to sell off, and it also may cause some business issues for TPCi as English-language cards aren’t exactly going to English-speaking players. Thankfully it’s clear now that TPCi understand how they could sell more Spanish cards to the Latin American region and make it more common in all countries from the region if they made a Latin American Spanish version. Everyone wins!
But now the next question is: will Latin American Spanish cards survive in the Pokémon TCG, or will it be discontinued at some point? Afterall, there have been cases of languages that got discontinued throughout time: Dutch (used for the first expansions), Polish (used during DP era) or Russian (used during XY era). On the other hand, Korean and Traditional Chinese were discontinued only to reappear later on. So we will see what happens!
For the first time the differences in Peninsular Spanish and Latin American Spanish are being recognized and incorporated into the Pokémon games, signifying that Pokémon will be around for long enough that these differences will actually help keep us playing together. What other languages are coming in our future? We’d love to hear what you think about this over at the PA! Discord—particularly our Spanish Channel. And thanks again to Dr. Omanyte for his research on this!
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Sources:
- PokemonTCG, Twitter, 2025-01-09, https://x.com/PokemonTCG/status/1877355258826879214
- jccpokemon_es, Instagram, 2025-01-09, https://www.instagram.com/p/DEm4ajXgLHQ/
- pokemonlatam, Instagram, 2025-01-09, https://www.instagram.com/p/DEm41PlplAY/?img_index=1
- New Card Language: Latin American Spanish, Elite Fourum, 2025-01-09, https://www.elitefourum.com/t/new-card-language-latin-american-spanish/52075
- Quuador, New Card Language: Latin American Spanish, Elite Fourum, 2025-01-09, https://www.elitefourum.com/t/new-card-language-latin-american-spanish/52075/59
- Pokemon (LATAM), Escarlata y Púrpura-Aventuras Compartidas, https://www.pokemon.com/el/jcc-pokemon/escarlata-y-purpura-aventuras-compartidas
- Pokémon (Spain), Escarlata y Púrpura-Juntos de Aventuras, https://www.pokemon.com/es/jcc-pokemon/escarlata-y-purpura-juntos-de-aventuras
- ANMTVLA, El gran problema de Pokémon en Latinoamérica (Explicado por Ash y Brock), YouTube, 2021-12-06, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6pTEMSb5k&ab_channel=ANMTVLA
Credits: Huge thanks to people from different places who helped with some data
- Gudbais
- Quuador