Bean Validation 1.1 , among many new features, introduced error message interpolation using Unified Expression Language (EL) expressions. This allows to define error messages based on conditional logic and also enables advanced formatting options . Added to a Spring MVC application let you display more friendly error messages quite simply. In the first part of this article I will shortly describe message interpolation with EL expressions, in the second part we will build a simple web application with Spring Boot and Thymeleaf that runs on Tomcat 8.