The motivation for and starting point of this research has been the grammatical description of the essential uses of the Spanish definite and indefinite articles as a necessary tool for future application in the context of second language acquisition from a teaching and learning perspective. To this end, the aim of the present research was to identify the essential uses through a synchronous panoramic ([1954] Amado Alonso, Alarcos Llorach [1970, 2000], Lapesa [1974, 1975, 1980], Lazaro Carreter [1980], and Laca [1999] Leonetti [1999] among others). Although grammarians’ proposals to which we have referred embrace all uses of Spanish article, there is a lack of systematic proposals with an invariant value capable of describing the operation of the article, as well as the complex network of contextual relations established in its different uses.