Level A2 · Chapter 41
The letter to Dulcinea
Don Quixote stays in the Sierra Morena performing madness for love and dictates two letters in one notebook. One asks for love, the other for donkeys.
What you will learn
- Write a letter with its four parts in the right order.
- Choose the opening and the sign-off according to how well you know the reader.
- Turn a letter from tú into usted without leaving a single word behind.
Before you read
This lesson holds two letters, one after the other, and they could hardly be less alike. One is addressed to a lady the writer worships, the other to a niece who owes him three donkeys. Watch how each one opens and how each one signs off. That contrast is the whole grammar point.The story in easy Spanish
Don Quijote se quedó en Sierra Morena para hacer locuras de amor.
Don Quixote stayed in the Sierra Morena to perform acts of madness for love.
Los caballeros de sus libros también sufrían por su dama.
The knights in his books also suffered for their lady.
Sancho tenía que llevar una carta a Dulcinea del Toboso.
Sancho had to take a letter to Dulcinea of El Toboso.
«No tenemos papel», dijo el escudero con cara de duda.
"We have no paper," said the squire, looking doubtful.
«Escribiré en el librillo de Cardenio», respondió el caballero.
"I will write in Cardenio’s notebook," answered the knight.
Abrió el libro y empezó por el encabezamiento.
He opened the book and began with the opening line.
«Soberana y alta señora», dictó muy despacio.
"Sovereign and lofty lady," he dictated very slowly.
Después vinieron las quejas del enamorado.
Then came the complaints of the man in love.
La carta hablaba de heridas, de ausencia y de desdenes.
The letter spoke of wounds, of absence and of disdain.
Todo el cuerpo de la carta iba de tú.
The whole body of the letter used tú.
Al final firmó: «Tuyo hasta la muerte.»
At the end he signed: "Yours until death."
Debajo puso su nombre de guerra, el Caballero de la Triste Figura.
Underneath he put his war name, the Knight of the Sorrowful Face.
Sancho escuchó la carta entera y se quedó con la boca abierta.
Sancho listened to the whole letter and stood there open-mouthed.
«Es la cosa más alta que he oído nunca», dijo.
"That is the finest thing I have ever heard," he said.
La verdad es que no entendía casi ninguna palabra.
The truth is that he understood almost none of the words.
Luego don Quijote escribió en el mismo librillo otra carta.
Then Don Quixote wrote another letter in the same notebook.
Era para su sobrina y pedía tres pollinos para Sancho.
It was for his niece and it asked for three young donkeys for Sancho.
Esta segunda carta no tenía quejas ni suspiros.
This second letter had no complaints and no sighs.
Empezaba de usted: «Mandará vuestra merced, señora sobrina.»
It began with the formal form: "Your worship will order, madam niece."
Terminaba con el sitio y la fecha, sin abrazos y sin besos.
It ended with the place and the date, with no hugs and no kisses.
Una carta pedía amor. La otra pedía burros.
One letter asked for love. The other asked for donkeys.
Sancho pidió la firma y su amo dijo que no hacía falta.
Sancho asked for the signature and his master said it was not needed.
«Basta con mi rúbrica, y para tres asnos sobra.»
"My flourish is enough, and for three donkeys it is more than enough."
El escudero guardó el librillo con las dos cartas dentro.
The squire put away the notebook with both letters inside.
Llevaba en el bolsillo el amor más alto y tres burros.
In his pocket he was carrying the loftiest love and three donkeys.
Vocabulary
The parts of a letter
- el encabezamiento
- the opening line
- el saludo
- the greeting
- el cuerpo
- the body
- la despedida
- the sign-off
- la firma
- the signature
- la posdata
- the postscript
- el sobre
- the envelope
- el remitente
- the sender
- el destinatario
- the addressee
Opening a letter
- Querido Sancho
- Dear Sancho
- Querida madre
- Dear mother
- Hola, Ana
- Hi Ana
- Estimado señor
- Dear Sir
- Estimada señora
- Dear Madam
- Muy señor mío
- Dear Sir
- A quien corresponda
- To whom it may concern
Signing off
- un abrazo
- a hug, best wishes
- un beso
- a kiss
- hasta pronto
- see you soon
- con cariño
- with love
- atentamente
- yours sincerely
- un cordial saludo
- kind regards
- tuyo / tuya
- yours
The love letter and its parody
- el enamorado
- the man in love
- la dama
- the lady
- el desdén
- the disdain
- la ausencia
- the absence
- la queja
- the complaint
- suspirar
- to sigh
- la herida
- the wound
Writing a letter: tú and usted on paper
Soberana y alta señora, tuyo hasta la muerte.
Mandará vuestra merced dar 3 pollinos a Sancho.
Estimada señora, le escribo para pedirle una cosa.
A Spanish letter has four fixed parts, always in this order, and each one has its own set of ready-made phrases. Learn the phrases whole and you will never again stare at a blank page wondering how to start.
| part | what it does | example |
|---|---|---|
| encabezamiento | names the reader | Querido Sancho, / Estimada señora, |
| saludo | breaks the ice | ¿Qué tal estás? / Le escribo para pedirle una cosa. |
| cuerpo | says the thing | the message itself |
| despedida | closes and signs | Un abrazo, / Atentamente, |
The one decision that governs everything
Before you write the first word you choose tú or usted, and then you keep it to the last full stop. Mixing the two halfway down the page is the single most visible mistake in a Spanish letter, and unlike in speech there is nobody there to smooth it over.
| where it shows | tú | usted |
|---|---|---|
| opening | Querido Juan, Hola Ana, | Estimado señor, Muy señor mío, |
| verb ending | tienes, quieres, sabes, escribes | tiene, quiere, sabe, escribe |
| object pronoun | te escribo, te mando | le escribo, le mando |
| after a preposition | para ti, contigo | para usted, con usted |
| possessive | tu carta, tus hijos | su carta, sus hijos |
| sign-off | Un abrazo, Un beso, Hasta pronto | Atentamente, Un cordial saludo |
Openings you can use today
Informal. Querido and querida agree with the person: Querido Sancho, Querida Teresa, Queridos padres. With friends of your own age Hola, Ana is now completely normal, even on paper. Then break the ice: ¿Qué tal estás?, ¿Cómo va todo?, Te escribo desde Sierra Morena.
Formal. Estimado señor, Estimada señora, Estimados señores for a company, A quien corresponda when you do not know the name. Muy señor mío is heavier and older, and still turns up in letters from banks. Then state your business straight away, which is what Spanish formal letters do: Le escribo para pedirle..., Me dirijo a usted para..., Recibí su carta del 3 de agosto.
A trap worth naming
The phrase every course teaches first is espero que estés bien, and it is out of reach for now, because estés is a subjunctive and the subjunctive belongs to B1. The same goes for espero que se encuentre bien. Until then you have perfectly good alternatives that need no subjunctive at all: ¿Qué tal estás? informally, and formally simply nothing, because a Spanish business letter is allowed to open with its own subject and no small talk whatsoever.
Sign-offs, ranked
| Spanish | English | use it with |
|---|---|---|
| Un beso, Besos | love, kisses | family, close friends |
| Un abrazo | best wishes, love | friends, warm but not intimate |
| Con cariño | with love | family |
| Hasta pronto | see you soon | anyone you will see again |
| Un cordial saludo | kind regards | work, polite and neutral |
| Atentamente | yours sincerely | any formal letter |
All of them take a comma, and the name goes on the line below. And the date sits at the top right, city first: Madrid, 22 de agosto de 2026. The month is lower case in Spanish, always.
Turning a letter from tú into usted
This is the exercise that proves you have understood. Take Querido Sancho: te escribo para decirte que tu carta llegó y que voy contigo and move it up a register: Estimado señor: le escribo para decirle que su carta llegó y que voy con usted. Six words changed and not one of them optional.
How a letter travelled in 1605
There were no stamps in 1605, no postboxes and no delivery. A letter travelled because somebody carried it, on a mule, along with the wine and the cheese, and if that person got drunk or changed his mind the letter simply never arrived. This is why the scene matters: Sancho is not the messenger, he is the entire postal service, and Don Quixote knows it. It is also why the joke lands later, when Sancho loses the notebook and has to recite the letter from a memory that cannot hold his own name.
The love letter itself was a genre with rules as strict as a sonnet, inherited from the poetry of courtly love. The lover is wounded, the lady is cruel, absence is a kind of illness, and the letter exists to complain rather than to communicate. Cervantes follows every rule exactly, which is what makes the parody work. He then thickens it with deliberately archaic Spanish, the ferido and fermosura and maguer of the chivalric romances, words already two centuries out of date when the book was printed. Sancho, hearing it, declares it the finest thing he has ever heard and understands not a syllable, which is roughly what Cervantes suspected about readers of romances in general.
Then, on the very next page of the same little notebook, comes the second letter, and this is the stroke of genius. It is a cédula, a promissory note, addressed to his niece and ordering her to hand over three of the five donkeys he left at home. It has a date, a place, a legal formula and no feeling at all. Fecha en las entrañas de Sierra Morena, dated in the bowels of the Sierra Morena. The two letters sit side by side, in one hand, on one afternoon: the highest love in Spanish literature and an invoice for livestock. Nobody before Cervantes had thought to put them on the same page.
Cervantes in the original
Soberana y alta señora: El ferido de punta de ausencia y el llagado de las telas del corazón, dulcísima Dulcinea del Toboso, te envía la salud que él no tiene.
Sovereign and lofty lady: He who is wounded by the point of absence and pierced through the fabric of the heart, sweetest Dulcinea of El Toboso, sends you the health that he himself does not have.
The whole letter is here in miniature: a heading pitched as high as language allows, a body that uses tú, and a complaint. Note first that the lover never says yo. He refers to himself in the third person as el ferido and el llagado, the wounded one and the pierced one, so that the sentence arrives at its verb, te envía, having postponed the writer for as long as possible. That is the machinery of the courtly love letter working exactly as designed. Then the archaism: ferido is herido, and a few lines later fermosura is hermosura, both preserving an initial f that Spanish had turned into a silent h generations earlier. Don Quixote is writing in the language of his romances, and the effect on a reader of 1605 was roughly that of a modern love letter written in the English of Malory. Sancho’s verdict, that it is the finest thing he has ever heard, is delivered without understanding a single word of it, and Cervantes lets that stand as the review.