Level C2 · Part One, front matter
The royal licence of 1605: Spanish bureaucracy at full length
Before the novel starts there are seven pages of paperwork, and they are real. This is the royal privilege to print, in one sentence, with the king writing as nos and the verbs in a shape that has left the language. Anyone who has read a Spanish contract will recognise the machinery immediately.
The passage, exactly as Cervantes wrote it
Miguel de Cervantes, Part One, front matter. Public domain, and not adapted, shortened or modernised in any way.
nos fue fecha relación que habíades compuesto un libro intitulado El ingenioso hidalgo de la Mancha, el cual os había costado mucho trabajo y era muy útil y provechoso, nos pedistes y suplicastes os mandásemos dar licencia y facultad para le poder imprimir, y previlegio por el tiempo que fuésemos servidos, o como la nuestra merced fuese; lo cual visto por los del nuestro Consejo, por cuanto en el dicho libro se hicieron las diligencias que la premática últimamente por nos fecha sobre la impresión de los libros dispone, fue acordado que debíamos mandar dar esta nuestra cédula para vos, en la dicha razón; y nos tuvímoslo por bien.
it was reported to us that you had composed a book entitled The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, which had cost you much labour and was very useful and profitable, and you asked and begged us to order that you be given licence and authority to print it, and a privilege for as long as we should see fit, or as our pleasure might be. Our Council having considered the matter, and inasmuch as in the said book the formalities were carried out that the decree lately issued by us on the printing of books requires, it was agreed that we should order this our warrant to be given to you in the said matter, and we held it to be good.
The same thing in Spanish as it is written today
Read the two side by side. What has changed between them is the syllabus of this level.
nos informaron de que usted había escrito un libro titulado El ingenioso hidalgo de la Mancha, que le había costado mucho trabajo y era muy útil y provechoso, y nos pidió y suplicó que le concediéramos licencia y permiso para poder imprimirlo, y privilegio por el tiempo que considerásemos oportuno, o lo que fuera nuestra voluntad. Visto el asunto por los de nuestro Consejo, y puesto que en dicho libro se cumplieron los trámites que exige la norma dictada últimamente por nosotros sobre la impresión de libros, se acordó que debíamos mandar darle esta nuestra cédula, y nos pareció bien.
What changed, form by form
| In the text | Today | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| nos fue fecha relación | nos informaron | Fecha for hecha, and a passive where today there would be a subject. |
| habíades | habíais | The -ades ending for -ais, in a document printed in 1605. |
| pedistes y suplicastes | pedisteis y suplicasteis | The older second person plural preterite, without the i. |
| para le poder imprimir | para poder imprimirlo | Le for lo, and the pronoun in front of the verb group. |
| previlegio | privilegio | A spelling still unsettled at the time. |
| premática | pragmática, norma | A royal decree. The word survives only in legal history. |
| tuvímoslo por bien | nos pareció bien | Tener por plus an adjective, with the pronoun hooked on the end. |
The syntax
One sentence, and it is built the way statutes are still built in Spanish: a chain of subordinates that reports what happened, then lo cual visto por, an absolute participle standing in for a whole clause, and only then the decision. The king speaks as nos and takes plural verbs throughout, which is why fuésemos servidos looks like a mistake and is not.
What a Spanish reader hears
Two things worth seeing. First, this is not fiction and it is the first Spanish in the book, so a reader in 1605 met the state before he met the hidalgo. Second, Cervantes then spends the prologue mocking exactly this apparatus of approvals and dedications, which means the joke starts before the novel does. Modern editions often cut these pages, and the opening loses its target.
Where the course prepares you for this
- How an official document talksLesson 78Sancho Governs Barataria