Rails date i18n with custom formats not translating

Question

I made an initializer named: 'date_formats.rb' and it looks like:

Date::DATE_FORMATS[:default] = "%B %e, %Y" # November 3, 2013
DateTime::DATE_FORMATS[:default] = "%B %e, %Y" # November 3, 2013 14:22
Time::DATE_FORMATS[:default] = "%B %d, %Y %H:%M"           # November 3, 2013 14:22

So when i call somemodel.created_at i got something like: December 16, 2014 12:37 . I love this because i dont have to struggle with strftime anymore

The problem begins when i need this date to print in spanish. So far i have installed rails-18n gem, and because i have to translate some custom texts i have already an es.yml that looks like this:

es:
  hello: "Hello world"
  Client: "Cliente"
  update: "Actualización"
  create: "Creación"
  identification_number: "Número de identificación"
  created_by: "Creado por"
  identification_type: "Tipo de identificación"
  name: "Nombre"
  observations: "Observaciones"
  status: "Estado"
  client_type: "Tipo de cliente"
  contract_start_date: "Fecha de inicio de contrato"
  contract_end_date: "Fecha de fin de contrato"
  contact_name: "Nombre del contacto"
  telephone: "Teléfono"
  email: "Email"
  address: "Dirección"
  created_by_id: "Id creador"
  date:
    order:
      - :day
      - :month
      - :year
    abbr_day_names:
      - dom
      - lun
      - mar
      - mié
      - jue
      - vie
      - sáb
    abbr_month_names:
      - ~
      - ene
      - feb
      - mar
      - abr
      - may
      - jun
      - jul
      - ago
      - sep
      - oct
      - nov
      - dic
    day_names:
      - domingo
      - lunes
      - martes
      - miércoles
      - jueves
      - viernes
      - sábado
    month_names:
      - ~
      - enero
      - febrero
      - marzo
      - abril
      - mayo
      - junio
      - julio
      - agosto
      - septiembre
      - octubre
      - noviembre
      - diciembre
    formats:
      short: "%d de %b"
      default: "%d/%m/%Y"
      long: "%A, %d de %B de %Y"
  time:
    formats:
      short: "%d de %b a las %H:%M hrs"
      default: "%a, %d de %b de %Y a las %H:%M:%S %Z"
      long: "%A, %d de %B de %Y a las %I:%M %p"
    am: "am"
    pm: "pm"

It doesnt translate my dates. It only works if i call it like this l somemodel.created_at but i dont want to call the method localize everytime i need to display a date.

So far my application.rb looks like this:

config.i18n.load_path += Dir[Rails.root.join('config', 'locales', '**', '*.{rb,yml}')]
config.i18n.available_locales = ['es', :es]
config.i18n.default_locale = :es
I18n.locale = config.i18n.locale = config.i18n.default_locale

Note that i have tried a lot of workarounds to be sure it is loading the correct .yml, and i have made sure it is.

Answer 1

But the localize or short l method is the method that does the trick. You cannot get rid of it. Without that method the I18n module is not called at all.