Antonio’s song

What you will learn

• Tell a scene with the background in the imperfect and the action in the preterite.
• Use mientras with the imperfect and cuando with the preterite.
• Choose between the two past tenses without translating from English.

Before you read

The story in easy Spanish

Cuando don Quijote terminó el discurso, los cabreros no dijeron nada.

When Don Quixote finished his speech, the goatherds said nothing.

Estaban callados y miraban el fuego, porque no entendían aquellas palabras.

They were silent and were watching the fire, because they did not understand those words.

El caballero todavía tenía una oreja rota de una pelea vieja.

The knight still had one ear split open from an old fight.

Un cabrero viejo miró la herida a la luz del fuego.

An old goatherd looked at the wound by firelight.

Cogió unas hojas de romero, las mezcló con sal y las puso sobre la oreja.

He took some rosemary leaves, mixed them with salt and laid them on the ear.

Luego ató todo con un paño limpio. Don Quijote no se quejó.

Then he tied it all on with a clean cloth. Don Quixote did not complain.

«Los caballeros andantes no se quejan del dolor», explicó a Sancho.

"Knights errant do not complain of pain," he explained to Sancho.

Mientras el fuego ardía, llegó un muchacho con un instrumento pequeño.

While the fire was burning, a lad arrived with a small instrument.

Se llamaba Antonio y era sobrino de uno de los cabreros.

His name was Antonio and he was the nephew of one of the goatherds.

Los demás querían música, así que el muchacho se sentó y cantó.

The others wanted music, so the lad sat down and sang.

La canción hablaba de Olalla, una muchacha que nunca decía ni sí ni no.

The song was about Olalla, a girl who never said either yes or no.

Mientras Antonio cantaba, don Quijote pensaba en Dulcinea.

While Antonio was singing, Don Quixote was thinking about Dulcinea.

Cuando terminó la canción, todos aplaudieron y pidieron otra.

When the song finished, everyone clapped and asked for another one.

Sancho ya dormía junto al fuego, con la boca abierta.

Sancho was already asleep by the fire, with his mouth open.

Vocabulary

The treatment

la herida

the wound

la oreja

the ear

el romero

the rosemary

la sal

the salt

el paño

the cloth

atar

to tie

Music and people

el instrumento

the instrument

la canción

the song

cantar

to sing

aplaudir

to clap

el sobrino

the nephew

Joining two pasts

mientras

while

cuando

when

luego

then, afterwards

todavía

still

ya

already

Preterite and imperfect: background and action

Mientras el fuego ardía, llegó un muchacho.

Mientras Antonio cantaba, don Quijote pensaba en Dulcinea.

Cuando terminó la canción, todos aplaudieron.

The imperfect is the long line. It is the fire that was already burning, the music the others already wanted, the sleep Sancho was already in. The preterite is the dot. It is the arrival, the song, the applause, the things that move the night forward.

Two words that decide it for you

mientras (while) introduces the line, so it takes the imperfect: mientras el fuego ardía. cuando (when), followed by one finished event, takes the preterite: cuando terminó la canción.

From there, three shapes cover almost everything you will ever write:

The test that works

Do not ask what English says. Ask what the sentence is doing. If it answers what happened next, use the preterite. If it answers what was going on or what things were like, use the imperfect. Cut the whole paragraph of the story into these two columns once, by hand, and the distinction stops being theory.

One warning that saves a lot of pain later. A few verbs change their meaning with the tense. Sabía is I knew, but supe is I found out. Quería is I wanted, but quise is I tried. Conocía a Sancho is I knew Sancho, and conocí a Sancho is I met Sancho. That is the same rule underneath: the dot marks the moment the state began.

Rosemary, salt and the rabel

The goatherd chewing rosemary leaves and mixing them with salt is not folklore invented for the scene. It is ordinary Spanish country medicine, and it was not stupid: salt draws water out of a wound and rosemary oil kills some of what grows in it. Two hundred kilometres from any surgeon, this was the treatment, and a man who worked with animals had done it a hundred times.

Set that beside the speech of the previous night. Don Quixote paid for his supper with a lost Golden Age, and the goatherds pay him back with the one thing they actually possess, which is competence.

The instrument Antonio arrives with is a rabel: three strings, played with a bow, the cheapest thing a shepherd could own. What he sings is a romance, the eight-syllable ballad form that everyone in Spain knew by ear. Cervantes even gives us the words. The song opens Yo sé, Olalla, que me adoras, puesto que no me lo has dicho ni aun con los ojos siquiera, mudas lenguas de amoríos, which is a village lad telling a girl he knows she loves him because she has never once looked at him.

Cervantes in the original

De allí a poco llegó el que le tañía, que era un mozo de hasta veinte y dos años, de muy buena gracia.

Shortly afterwards the one who was playing it arrived, a lad of about twenty-two, very good-looking.

Here is the whole lesson inside one line of the original. llegó is the dot, the moment the lad walks into the firelight, and era is the line, the description of him that was already true before he arrived and stayed true afterwards. Nobody arrives gradually, and nobody turns twenty-two in an instant. Note also veinte y dos, written as three words in 1605, where today you write veintidós.