Pasta
Money, cash — Spain's everyday slang for 'dough'.
Related lesson: Money Talk — Pay, Split and Save Like a Native.
Hear it in context
Ese coche cuesta una pasta.
That car costs a fortune.
No puedo ir de viaje, estoy sin pasta hasta fin de mes.
I can't go on the trip — I'm broke until the end of the month.
¿Me dejas algo de pasta? Te lo devuelvo el viernes.
Can you lend me some cash? I'll pay you back on Friday.
Con ese trabajo se está ganando una pasta gansa.
He's making serious money with that job.
What It Actually Means
Pasta is the most common informal word for money in Spain — the equivalent of “dough” or “cash”. It shows up wherever friends talk about earning, spending, lending, or lacking money. Nobody will misunderstand you: if there’s no plate of spaghetti in sight, pasta means money.
Common Constructions
- Costar/valer una pasta — to cost a fortune.
- Una pasta gansa — an emphatic pile of money: “Se gastó una pasta gansa en la boda.”
- Estar sin pasta — to be broke.
- Soltar la pasta — to cough up, pay what you owe: “Venga, suelta la pasta.”
- Forrarse — the natural companion verb, “to make a killing”.
Where Textbooks Get It Wrong
Textbooks give you dinero and stop there. Dinero is always correct, but in casual conversation among Spaniards, pasta dominates. You’ll also hear perras and the older duros in set phrases, but pasta is the one worth producing yourself.
Common Pitfall
Register: fine with friends, family, and most workmates, but in a bank, a negotiation, or an email you switch back to dinero. And context does the disambiguating with food — “me encanta la pasta” at an Italian restaurant is about noodles; anywhere else, people will assume you love money and laugh.