First texts in Spanish

For students learning Spanish: short texts from the reader, from the shortest to the longest, to read in full. The texts are in Spanish; each work is introduced in one sentence in English.

In the reader, the “Aa” settings enlarge the text and the space between lines; you can also highlight words to look up and add a note.

• Ofertorio

  Amado Nervo · La amada inmóvil · Mexico, 1920

  The mourning of a love kept secret for ten years, written day by day after the death of the beloved.

  50 words
• Sueño despierto

  José Martí · Ismaelillo · Cuba, 1882

  The exile of a Cuban between Caracas and New York, in the early 1880s.

  51 words
• Capítulo I

  Jorge Isaacs · Maria: A South American Romance · Colombia, 1867

  Two cousins raised together fall in love on a hacienda in the Cauca, and one must leave for Europe.

  288 words
• Retrato

  Antonio Machado · Fields of Castile · Spain, 1912

  Poems on the lands and the men of Castile, written in Soria at the beginning of the twentieth century.

  305 words
• De cómo vivía entonces la gente

  Pedro Antonio de Alarcón · The Three-Cornered Hat · Spain, 1874

  A magistrate covets a miller's wife and arranges to find the house empty.

  313 words
• Capítulo 2

  Miguel Cané · Juvenilia · Argentina, 1884

  A former boarder remembers the great school of Buenos Aires and its rector.

  499 words
• Prólogo

  Jacinto Benavente · The Bonds of Interest · Spain, 1907

  A penniless valet invents a fortune and a noble birth for his master, and runs the town into debt in his name.

  507 words
• El domador de pulgas

  Max Jiménez · El domador de pulgas · Costa Rica, 1936

  A satirical fable in which a world of fleas fed on the blood of its creator reproduces the vices of men.

  542 words
• I. La cita

  Juana Manuela Gorriti · The Quena · Argentina, 1845

  Promised to a magistrate, a young Creole woman loves a mestizo raised far from his mother.

  967 words
• El escuerzo

  Leopoldo Lugones · Strange Forces · Argentina, 1906

  Scholars invite a friend to see their experiments on sound, on flowers, or on the speech of a monkey.

  1411 words

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