caminar

To walk — one of the most common intransitive verbs in Spanish, largely interchangeable with andar in most regions, though caminar often implies walking with a clearer sense of destination or distance covered. Essential everyday vocabulary.

• Caminamos dos horas por la playa. — We walked for two hours along the beach.
• El bebé ya empieza a caminar. — The baby is starting to walk now.
• Prefiero caminar al trabajo cuando hace buen tiempo. — I prefer to walk to work when the weather's nice.

Caminar and andar overlap heavily but aren't perfectly interchangeable in every fixed expression — andar, not caminar, is the verb used in idioms like andar mal de dinero (to be short on money), where the sense has drifted from literal walking.

• song Caminando – Rubén Blades — A 1991 salsa song by Panamanian singer Rubén Blades and Son del Solar, the title track of his album of the same name, with the memorable refrain "Caminando, se aprende en la vida" (Walking, one learns in life) — it later became associated with Blades' foray into Panamanian politics.