despertar

Most often transitive, meaning to wake someone up (despertar a los niños) or, figuratively, to spark or arouse a feeling — despertar interés, despertar curiosidad, despertar sospechas. In everyday speech about waking up yourself, the reflexive despertarse is what most speakers actually use, though plain despertar also appears intransitively in some regions and in more literary or set phrases like al despertar ("upon waking").

• El ruido de la calle despertó al bebé. — The noise from the street woke the baby up.
• La noticia despertó mucha curiosidad entre los vecinos. — The news sparked a lot of curiosity among the neighbors.
• Al despertar, lo primero que hago es revisar el teléfono. — Upon waking up, the first thing I do is check my phone.

Using bare despertar where despertarse is expected for "I woke up" — me desperté a las siete is the standard everyday way to describe your own waking up; unreflexive desperté a las siete sounds off to many speakers outside a handful of dialects/registers.

Often confused with despertarse.

• politics "Chile despertó" — The rallying cry of Chile's October 2019 estallido social (social uprising) — protesters used the phrase, literally "Chile woke up," as the defining slogan of the mass demonstrations that ultimately led to a national process to rewrite the constitution.
• song Al Despertar — A single by Enrique Iglesias from his 1997 album Vivir.