Five Heartfelt Ways to Say I Miss You in Spanish

If you travel around Latin America and Spain, you will most definitely make lots of friends. They’re easy places to make connections?

But what happens when you go back home? You’ll miss them, for sure.

So how do you say “I miss you” in Spanish? Te extraño is the one that’s used the most in most Latin American countries, but there are other options, such as te echo de menos, me haces falta, ojalá estuvieras aquí and ya quiero verte which have slightly different meanings, but are all related to the feeling of missing someone.

Let’s see when and how to say I miss you in Spanish!

I Miss You in Spanish at a Glance

Most Common Ways to Say I Miss You in Spanish

Te extraño

Te extraño is the basic phrase in Spanish for “I miss you”.

It is derived from the verb extrañar, which means “to miss”. It is used in most Latin American countries and its literal translation would be, precisely, “I miss you.” 

However using te extraño in this case only applies if you’re talking about missing one person. If you’re missing multiple people, the correct way to say I miss you would be los extraño, meaning “I miss you guys”.

Take a look at the table below to see all of the different forms I miss you in Spanish using the verb extrañar.

Spanish	English
Te extraño	I miss you (singular)
Lo extraño	I miss him
La extraño	I miss her
Los extraño	I miss you (male group or mixed male and female group)
Las extraño	I miss you (female group of people)
Los extraño	I miss them (male group or mixed male and female group)
Las extraño	I miss them (female group of people)

Luckily, if you want say you miss someone a lot or not very much, it’s very simple. I miss you a lot is te extraño mucho and I miss you a little is te extraño un poco.

Te echo de menos

In Spain, te extraño is not very common. Instead, continental Spanish speakers use te echo de menos , which has a lovely literal meaning. It implies “I feel sadness because of your absence” or “I feel your absence”. But is used in day-to-day life to mean “I miss you”.

The conjugations for using te echo de menos are identical to those of te extraño. We have just replaced the verb extraño with echo de menos. Take a look below.

Spanish	English
Te echo de menos	I miss you (singular)
Lo echo de menos	I miss him
La echo de menos	I miss her
Los echo de menos	I miss you (male group or mixed male and female group)
Las echo de menos	I miss you (female group of people)
Los echo de menos	I miss them (male group or mixed male and female group)
Las echo de menos	I miss them (female group of people)

Me haces falta

The phrase me haces falta is another way of saying I miss you. But its literal translation would be something more similar to “I need you”. So it conveys a bit more passion and has a romantic context compared to te extraño.

The structure and conjugations for me haces falta is different to that of te extraño. In this situation, the verb “hacer” is conjugated.

Spanish	English
Me haces falta	I miss you / I need you (singular)
Me hace falta	I need him / her
Me hacen falta	I need you (plural – fem and masc) / I need them (fem and masc)

Ojalá estuvieras aquí

Ojalá estuvieras aquí is another option for saying “I miss you” in Spanish. It actually means “I wish you were here”. Just like with me haces falta, the verb needs to be conjugated.

The verb estuvieras is an example of the subjunctive in Spanish. The subjunctive is a little tricky, but this is one of the really common use cases that you can learn standalone. (See here for our simple guide to the Spanish subjunctive.)

Spanish	English
Ojalá estuvieras aquí	I wish you were here (singular)
Ojalá estuviera aquí	I wish he / she was here
Ojalá estuvieran aquí	I wish you were here (plural – masc and fem)

Side note: The word ojalá is quite an interesting one that has distant roots in Arabic.

Ya quiero verte

Another way you can say “I miss you” in Spanish is to say Ya quiero verte . This means “I can’t wait to see you” or “I want to see you now”, but it is used in the same situations as “I miss you”.

With ya quiero verte, you need to change the ending depending on who you’re referring to. See below.

Spanish	English
Ya quiero verte	I can’t wait to see you (singular)
Ya quiero verlo	I can’t wait to see him
Ya quiero verla	I can’t wait to see her
Ya quiero verlos	I can’t wait to see them or I can’t wait to see you (plural)

How to Respond to I Miss You in Spanish

So how should we respond when someone has said “I miss you”? What should we say back? Well, it depends on which phrase the other person says.

Y yo a ti!

If you are told te extraño or te echo de menos, you could answer y yo a ti, which means “and I, you”, or you could also respond saying yo también, which means “me too.”

The same two answers could also be used for ya quiero verte but y yo a ti would have the meaning of “and I want to see you.”

Y tú a mí!

If you are told me haces falta (I need you), however, you should answer y tú a mí, which means “and you to me”. You could even add a también at the end to make y tú a mí también, which means “and I need you too.”

Ojalá!

If you are told Ojalá estuvieras aquí (I wish you were here), you could answer with ojalá, which means “I wish”, or you could also say me encantaría, which means “I would love that”.

Say “I Miss You” Back

You could also answer all of these phrases with another way to say “I miss you.” For example, if someone says te extraño, you could say ojalá estuvieras aquí or me haces falta, or even y yo te echo de menos a ti.

And if someone told us ojalá estuvieras aquí (I wish you were here) we could answer with I miss you.

How to Say “To Miss” (Nostalgically) in Spanish

Finally, there’s a verb you should learn if you want to talk about missing things in Spanish. The verb añorar means to yearn for something or to long for something.

Just as with these verbs in English, añorar can be used for both things and people. The difference between extrañar and añorar is that añorar sounds a bit more poetic, that it implies some level of sadness or nostalgia regarding those memories. It is used for things or people with whom we lost touch a long time ago.

For example, you can añorar your childhood, your youth, or a long-lost friend.

These are some example sentences:

If you want to transform añorar into a noun, then it becomes añoranza, which means longing or yearning.

Conclusion

There are many ways to say “I miss you” in Spanish, and though they don’t all have exactly the same meaning, they can all be used to express your feelings. It is also just as important to be able to respond when someone says “I miss you”, so that you can reciprocate someone’s feelings.