Spain and Latin America don't just sound different when spoken, they use genuinely different everyday words for ordinary things, the kind that show up constantly in real writing, not just conversation. This matters for reading specifically: a Spanish news article from Madrid and one from Mexico City can each use a completely different, equally correct word for "computer" or "car," and if you've only learned one, the other can stop you cold even though nothing about it is actually advanced or unusual.
The differences that actually show up in reading
Computer: ordenador in Spain, computadora (or computador in some countries) across most of Latin America. Both are completely standard; neither is wrong or old-fashioned.
Car: coche in Spain, carro or auto depending on the country in Latin America. Mexico tends toward carro, Argentina and Chile toward auto.
Cell phone: móvil in Spain, celular almost everywhere in Latin America. This one is close to universal on each side of the split.
Apartment: piso in Spain, departamento or apartamento in Latin America. Piso specifically means apartment in Spain, not floor level, which is a separate false-friend-style trap for learners who know piso only as "floor."
Potato: patata in Spain, papa across Latin America. Papa also means "pope," so context does the disambiguating in both directions.
Juice: zumo in Spain, jugo in Latin America.
Ticket: billete in Spain, boleto in Latin America, for things like a bus or train ticket. Billete also means a banknote in both varieties, which adds a layer of context-dependence either way.
Driving: conducir is standard and understood everywhere, but manejar is the more common everyday verb across most of Latin America, especially Mexico. A sentence using manejar instead of conducir isn't a different grammar point, just a different regional default for the same action.
None of these differences make one variety more correct than the other. Spanish has no single "standard" the way some languages informally treat one national dialect as the reference point; Spain and each Latin American country simply developed their own everyday vocabulary for common objects, the same way British and American English never converged on "biscuit" versus "cookie."
The one word worth learning deliberately: coger
Coger means "to take" or "to grab" in Spain, a completely neutral, everyday verb used constantly, as in coger el autobús, to take the bus. In Mexico, Argentina, and several other Latin American countries, the same word is vulgar slang with a sexual meaning, and using it the way a Spaniard would is a genuine, not-subtle mistake. Agarrar or tomar work as neutral substitutes across most of Latin America. This isn't a minor regional flavor difference the way patata versus papa is; it's a word where the exact same sentence means something completely different depending on which side of the Atlantic you're reading it from.
The grammatical difference that isn't just vocabulary: vosotros and voseo
Spain uses vosotros as the informal plural "you," with its own verb conjugation (vosotros habláis). Latin America doesn't use vosotros at all in everyday speech or writing, using ustedes for both formal and informal plural "you" instead. Separately, several Latin American countries, Argentina and Uruguay most prominently, use vos instead of tú for informal singular "you," with a distinct conjugation (vos hablás rather than tú hablas). A learner who only studied Spain-based materials can find vos conjugations genuinely unfamiliar the first time they appear in Argentine writing, not because the grammar is harder, just different from what they trained on.
More everyday pairs, and one that splits three ways
Bus: autobús works almost everywhere as the neutral written term, but everyday speech varies further than the Spain/Latin America split suggests: camión colloquially in Mexico, colectivo in Argentina, guagua in Cuba and the Canary Islands. A reader who only knows autobús can still be caught by camión meaning "bus" rather than "truck" in a Mexican news context.
Drinking straw: pajita in Spain, popote in Mexico, sorbete or bombilla in parts of South America depending on the country. A small, low-stakes example, but a good illustration that regional variation isn't limited to a clean two-way Spain-versus-Latin-America split; some words fracture into three or four regional forms.
Swimming pool: piscina in Spain and most of Latin America, alberca specifically in Mexico. Someone reading Mexican real-estate listings who only knows piscina can miss alberca entirely, even though it's the more common word in that specific market.
A worked example: the same fact, two newsrooms
A Spanish outlet describing a minor traffic story might write: "El conductor perdió el control de su coche mientras hablaba por el móvil." A Mexican outlet covering the identical kind of story might write: "El conductor perdió el control de su carro mientras hablaba por el celular." Both sentences say exactly the same thing, "the driver lost control of his car while talking on his cell phone," and neither is more correct. A reader trained only on one variety can misread the other as containing an unfamiliar or advanced word, when it's simply the other newsroom's normal vocabulary.
Why this matters more for reading than for a course
A course usually teaches one variety consistently, which is a reasonable choice for building a solid foundation, but it means the vocabulary and grammar you're fluent in might only cover roughly half of what's actually published in Spanish. Real news, whether from Spain, Mexico, Argentina, or elsewhere, doesn't stick to one variety for your convenience. Recognizing that a word you don't know might simply be a regional standard term, not a gap in your Spanish, changes how you read past it: instead of assuming you've hit something advanced, you can note the regional pattern and keep going, the same way a British and an American reader both handle "lift" and "elevator" without treating either as a vocabulary failure.