Category Archives: Spanish texts

1988, 177 p.

Yes, it’s The Alchemist, but it’s in Spanish, translated from the Portuguese by Montserrat Mila. I read this as part of my Spanishland course, so it’s at Intermediate level. For such a small book, it took quite a while to read.

The book is an allegorical tale about a young  Andalusian shepherd called Santiago (but often referred to as ‘the boy’) who sells his sheep after dreaming twice of finding treasure at the Pyramids. It’s a quest tale as he gets robbed repeatedly, meets people who further him on his journey, and finally ends up crossing the desert with the Alchemist, who gives him wise advice. Does he find his treasure?- well, you’ll have to read it yourself, in whatever language.

I must confess that the book was too new-agey and self-affirmational for me. It’s in the same genre as Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and those “wish for it and you’ll get it” type books.

But even in a language with which I am not particularly fluent, I could recognize that this was beautifully written, especially in its descriptions of the desert and in its telling of  falling in love with Fatima, the love of his life. Like most allegorical tales, it is simply told but it is not a children’s book at all.

202 P. Translated into Spanish by Margarita Valdez E.

Yes! I’ve finished it!  I haven’t read this book for a long time, and believe me, it took me a long time to read it for the second time, in Spanish! However, the language was easier than Harry Potter and at times the writing was so beautiful that I almost forgot that I was reading it in Spanish. I found the Christian overtones rather heavy-handed, but perhaps I’m becoming more intolerant in my old age. I enjoyed it, but I won’t rush to read the rest in the series – in either language.

And don’t you reckon that “Bruja Blanca” sounds more threatening than “White Witch”?

1997, 259 pages, translated into Spanish by Alicia Dellepiane Rawson

Si! He terminado de leer mi primero Harry Potter!

Yes- all in Spanish, all 259 pages of it! It only took about six months. I hadn’t read the books or seen the films, and I quite enjoyed it. It’s very reminiscent of those British children’s books of the 1950s or 1960s (Swallows and Amazons, Enid Blyton) etc. with the perennial unhappy child’s wish of having parents other than the ones they do. I’ve gathered lots of new words about wands, brooms and spells. Now I just have to find the opportunity to use them.

1972, 192 p.

Last year I did an online course about Macondo, the setting for many of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s stories and novels (see course details here).  Of course, I read all the stories in English, but I found the videos and transcripts in Spanish challenging and rewarding, and could revert to the English translations when it all became too hard. So, when I saw that Coursera were running a second course, I signed up.  It’s called Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Between Power, History and Love, and it looks at his work after the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude.  Once again, I’m reading the books in English but here’s an added degree of difficulty: there are no English subtitles or translation of the transcript.  I’m on my own!

The first week looks at the short story collection Innocent Erendira and other stories. As the lecturers explain, these short stories were written after the critical acclaim of Hundred Years and before the publication of The Autumn of the Patriarch, which marked a departure from his earlier work. The stories therefore have wisps of his earlier work, but apparently prefigure the books that he was to go on to write.

The volume starts with ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ about an angel arriving in a small village, where he is locked in the chicken-coop and becomes a sensation among the villagers.  It reminded me a little of Elizabeth Knox’s The Vintner’s Luck, where the angel Xas bursts into a real-life setting.  ‘The Sea of Lost Time’ is also set in a village, where the smell of roses permeates a village which is indebted to an unscrupulous gringo. The smell of roses reminded me of the butterflies in One Hundred Years of Solitude.  In ‘The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World’ a body washes ashore and the women of the village fall in love with it.  ‘Death Constant Beyond Love’ is about a dying senator who comes to a poverty-striken village and falls in love with a 19 year old. in ‘The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship’ a ghostly ship, seen only in glimpses, sails into a village. Again, I was reminded of One Hundred Years, although it was a train that arrived in a village there.  ‘Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles’ is a gruesome story about torture, where a trickster takes on a young boy as his sidekick.

The final story, which gives the collection its name, is ‘The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother’. Heartless indeed, this obese, manipulative grandmother prostitutes her granddaughter, chaining her to the bed to service lines of men.  It’s the longest story in the collection – more novella than short story, but it was too violent and distressing for me, I’m afraid.

Prostitution of children by parents arises in other stories here too, as in ‘Death Constant Before Love’ where a father gets his daughter to seduce the senator in order to gain a favor from him.  There are other themes that run across the stories too. Many of them make reference to the sea (‘The Handsomest Drowned Man’, ‘The Last Voyage of the Ghostly Ship’ and ‘The Sea of Lost Time’) and tricksters and shysters abound.  It’s a violent world.  There’s plenty of power being exercised here, by people who should be showing love.

Stylistically, the most striking story is ‘The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship’ which has only one full stop: the one that finishes the story.  Marquez manages to progress the story well, using only commas.

So, all in all, a good collection of short stories, and the Coursera lectures are worth listening/watching too. Just don’t ask me to translate them!

88 pages, alternating Spanish and English

Well, I’d been frustrated by Easy Spanish retellings of longer, classic stories that moved too quickly in a stripped-down fashion (for example, the Easy Spanish versions of  Alice in Wonderland and Don Quixote) but this book went to the other extreme with an excruciatingly slow story in much detail.

Sixty-five year old Ana, who has three adult sons and grandchildren, has been going from doctor to doctor, trying to find relief for her dry eyes that cannot shed tears.  Her son Paco finally takes her to see Dr Rodriguez, who quickly realizes that Ana’s inability to cry is more psychological than physiological. Eventually Ana divulges a secret that she has kept from her husband and family.

Actually, the level of this was just right. The chapters were long enough – about twenty lines in length – and they were followed immediately by the English translation. On the Kindle app on my tablet I was able to make the text large enough that the Spanish took up the whole page so there was no surreptitious cheating. The English version made you realize how choppy the tenses were (I hadn’t noticed in Spanish) or perhaps it’s a clunky translation.

And it was, at least, an adult story that actually captured my interest somewhat. It’s a rather low bar on these Easy Spanish books, I must admit. Anyway, this was quite good, considering.