What is the difference between este, ese and aquel?

Este means this (near me), ese means that (near you), aquel means that over there (away from both of us). It's a three-way distance split that English collapses into a two-way this/that. Use este for the book in your hand, ese for the book on the table between you, aquel for the book on the shelf across the room. Time works the same way: aquel verano means that summer years ago, ese verano means that summer we were just talking about.

Do Spanish demonstratives still take accents?

The Real Academia Española dropped the obligatory accent in 2010 - you no longer need to write éste, ése, aquél to distinguish the pronoun from the adjective. The neuter forms esto, eso, aquello never took an accent and still don't. Older books and many native writers still use the accent out of habit; both spellings are now considered correct.

Spanish Demonstratives

English has two demonstratives: this and that. Spanish has three: este (this), ese (that), aquel (that over there). The extra layer maps onto physical or psychological distance from the speaker, and once you internalise it the system is rigid and easy.

The full table

Each demonstrative agrees with the noun in gender and number, so each of the three lemmas has four forms.

Distance	Masc sg	Fem sg	Masc pl	Fem pl
Near speaker	este	esta	estos	estas
Near listener	ese	esa	esos	esas
Far from both	aquel	aquella	aquellos	aquellas

Twelve forms. Pick the row by distance, the column by the noun's gender and number.

The three-way deictic split

este libro = this book (the one I'm holding, near me)
ese libro = that book (near you, or the one we were just discussing)
aquel libro = that book (over there, away from both of us, or in the distant past)

The split applies to time as well as space.

este año = this year (the current one)
ese año = that year (the one we were just talking about)
aquel año = that year (a remote year, often nostalgic - aquel verano en Madrid)

Aquel is the one English speakers underuse. It carries a slight emotional weight - distance, nostalgia, or pointed contrast - that the other two don't have. Native speakers reach for it less in everyday speech than your textbook suggests, but it still lives in any sentence about the distant past.

Agreement with the noun

Standard noun agreement. The demonstrative matches the noun it modifies in gender and number, even when the noun is dropped.

esta mesa (this table - feminine singular)
estos libros (these books - masculine plural)
esas casas (those houses near you - feminine plural)
aquellos hombres (those men over there - masculine plural)

The neuter forms

Three extra forms - esto, eso, aquello - exist for referring to abstract things, situations, or unidentified objects. They don't agree with anything because they don't refer to a specific noun.

¿Qué es esto? (What is this?)
No me gusta eso. (I don't like that.)
Aquello fue un desastre. (That was a disaster.)

Use the neuter when there's no noun to agree with - usually when you're pointing at something unknown or referring to a whole situation. Once you name the noun, switch back to the gendered form.

Worked examples

Este coche es nuevo, ese es viejo. (This car is new, that one is old.)
Prefiero estas manzanas a aquellas. (I prefer these apples to those over there.)
¿Quién es esa mujer? (Who is that woman?)
Aquellos años fueron los mejores de mi vida. (Those years were the best of my life.)
No quiero hablar de eso. (I don't want to talk about that.)

Common mistakes English speakers make

The biggest one is collapsing the three-way split into two and using ese for everything that isn't right in front of you. Aquel exists for a reason - reach for it when the thing is genuinely far, or when you're talking about a distant period of time. The second is forgetting agreement: esta libro and esto libro are both wrong (libro is masculine, so it's este libro). The third is over-using the neuter - esto is for unidentified things, not a lazy fallback when you've forgotten the noun's gender.