Messi scored 36 hat-tricks in La Liga.
A hat-trick means scoring at least three goals in one match. Messi produced all 36 of his Spanish top-flight hat-tricks for Barcelona, making him the competition's all-time record holder. His final La Liga hat-trick came against Eibar on 22 February 2020, when he scored four goals in a 5–0 Barcelona victory.
The total is sometimes mixed up with Cristiano Ronaldo's La Liga record. Ronaldo scored 34 hat-tricks for Real Madrid, putting him second on the historical list. Messi's 36 therefore means two more than Ronaldo, not 36 goals in a single season or 36 hat-tricks across every competition.
Messi's best single La Liga season for hat-tricks was 2011–12, when he recorded eight. That season he also set the league's single-season scoring record with 50 goals. His hat-tricks came in many different forms: some were completed before half-time, some included penalties or free kicks, and others featured a fourth or even fifth goal. The defining statistic is the match total of three or more goals.