Level A2 · Chapter 42
Sancho leaves and Don Quixote is left alone
Sancho rides down to the plain with the letter while his master leaps among the rocks. The last A2 lesson, and a review of everything since lesson 21.
What you will learn
- Recognise the four past tenses and know which one each sentence needs.
- Review the future, the conditional, the various uses of se and the combined pronouns.
- Check that you can now read a whole scene without the translation beside it.
Before you read
This lesson brings no new grammar at all. Instead it brings the whole block together in one place. Read the story and try to put a name to every verb you meet: preterite, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, future, conditional. If you can do that, the block has done its work.The story in easy Spanish
Sancho cortó ramas de retama para marcar el camino de vuelta.
Sancho cut branches of broom to mark the way back.
Su amo se lo había aconsejado antes de la despedida.
His master had advised him to do it before they said goodbye.
Los dos lloraron un poco y se abrazaron entre las peñas.
The two of them wept a little and embraced among the crags.
El escudero subió a Rocinante y salió hacia el llano.
The squire climbed onto Rocinante and set off towards the plain.
Iba pensando en la carta que llevaba en el librillo.
He rode along thinking about the letter he was carrying in the notebook.
No había andado 100 pasos cuando volvió atrás.
He had not gone a hundred paces when he turned back.
«Señor, quiero ver una locura para poder jurarlo sin mentir.»
"Sir, I want to see one mad act so I can swear to it without lying."
«Ya te lo decía yo», respondió don Quijote muy contento.
"I told you so," replied Don Quixote, delighted.
«Espérate, que en un credo las haré todas.»
"Wait a moment, I will do the whole lot in a heartbeat."
Se quitó los calzones a toda prisa y se quedó en camisa.
He pulled off his breeches at top speed and stood there in his shirt.
Dio dos saltos en el aire y dos volteretas.
He gave two leaps in the air and two somersaults.
Puso la cabeza abajo y los pies en alto.
He put his head down and his feet in the air.
Sancho vio cosas que no quería ver otra vez.
Sancho saw things he did not want to see a second time.
Volvió la rienda y se fue muy satisfecho.
He turned the rein and rode off perfectly satisfied.
Ya podía jurar que su amo estaba loco de verdad.
Now he could swear that his master really was mad.
Don Quijote se quedó solo entre las peñas de Sierra Morena.
Don Quixote was left alone among the crags of the Sierra Morena.
Subió a una roca alta y se sentó a pensar.
He climbed a high rock and sat down to think.
Pensaba en las locuras que harían los caballeros de sus libros.
He was thinking about the mad acts the knights in his books would perform.
Unos se volvían furiosos y otros se ponían tristes.
Some of them turned furious and others turned sad.
Él haría las dos cosas, porque tenía tiempo de sobra.
He would do both, since he had time to spare.
Escribió versos en la corteza de los árboles con una navaja.
He carved verses into the bark of the trees with a knife.
Todos los versos terminaban con el nombre de Dulcinea.
Every one of the verses ended with Dulcinea’s name.
Comió hierbas y frutos, porque el ayuno formaba parte del papel.
He ate grass and fruit, because fasting was part of the role.
Mientras tanto, Sancho bajaba hacia el llano con su carta.
Meanwhile Sancho was riding down towards the plain with his letter.
Aquí se acaba el bloque A2. Aquí empieza otro camino.
Here the A2 block ends. Here another road begins.
Vocabulary
The mountains and the road
- la peña
- the crag
- la roca
- the rock
- la retama
- the broom plant
- el llano
- the plain
- la corteza
- the bark
- la señal
- the mark, the sign
- el paso
- the pace, the step
The farewell
- despedirse
- to say goodbye
- abrazarse
- to embrace
- la lágrima
- the tear
- la bendición
- the blessing
- la vuelta
- the return
- mientras tanto
- meanwhile
The mad acts of love
- la voltereta
- the somersault
- el salto
- the leap
- quedarse en camisa
- to strip to one’s shirt
- el ayuno
- the fasting
- el verso
- the line of verse
- jurar
- to swear
- volverse loco
- to go mad
Words for talking about grammar
- el indefinido
- the preterite
- el imperfecto
- the imperfect
- el pretérito perfecto
- the present perfect
- el pluscuamperfecto
- the pluperfect
- el futuro
- the future
- el condicional
- the conditional
- el pronombre
- the pronoun
The whole of A2 on one page: lessons 21 to 41
Sancho cortó las ramas mientras su amo lo miraba.
No había andado 100 pasos cuando volvió atrás.
Su amo se lo había aconsejado aquella misma mañana.
Mañana verá a Dulcinea y le dará la carta.
Él haría las 2 locuras, porque tenía tiempo de sobra.
Aquí se escriben versos y se comen hierbas.
No new grammar here. This page gathers lessons 21 to 41 into one place so you can see the shape of what you have built. Read it slowly, and after each table go back to the story above and find the tense working in a real sentence.
1. The four past tenses, and how they share the work
This is the heart of A2, and the thing that most separates a beginner from an intermediate speaker. English has one plain past for almost everything. Spanish has four, and they are not interchangeable.
| tense | the job it does | from this story |
|---|---|---|
| indefinido cortó, vio, dio | a single finished event, moving the story forward | Sancho cortó las ramas. Dio 2 saltos. |
| imperfecto miraba, quería, tenía | background, description, habit, what was going on | Su amo lo miraba. Tenía tiempo de sobra. |
| pretérito perfecto he visto, ha llegado | a past inside a time still open: today, this week, ever | He visto una locura. Es lo más alto que he oído. |
| pluscuamperfecto había andado, había dicho | a past that happened before another past | No había andado 100 pasos cuando volvió. |
The test that decides between the first two: does the sentence move the clock forward, or hold it still? Cortó moves it. Miraba holds it. A story is a chain of preterites laid over a bed of imperfects, and once you hear that, you are reading Spanish narrative the way Spanish readers do.
2. What has not happened yet
| tense | the job it does | example |
|---|---|---|
| futuro verá, dará, haré | what will happen, and also a guess about now | Mañana verá a Dulcinea. Estará en el Toboso. |
| condicional haría, gustaría, podría | what would happen, and polite requests | Él haría las 2 locuras. ¿Podría ayudarme? |
Both are built the same way and this is the good news: take the whole infinitive and add an ending. Future takes -é -ás -á -emos -éis -án, conditional takes the imperfect endings of -er verbs, -ía -ías -ía -íamos -íais -ían. The dozen irregular stems, tendr-, podr-, dir-, har-, saldr-, vendr-, querr-, sabr-, pondr-, habr-, are the same for both tenses, so you learn them once and get two tenses out of it.
3. Every se you have met
| kind of se | what it signals | example |
|---|---|---|
| reflexive | the subject acts on itself | Se quitó los calzones. |
| reciprocal | each other | Los 2 se abrazaron. |
| accidental | it happened to me, nobody is to blame | Se le cayó el librillo. |
| impersonal | people in general, no named subject | Aquí se come bien. |
| reflexive passive | the thing gets done, verb agrees with it | Aquí se escriben versos. |
| se instead of le | two pronouns in a row | Se la dio. |
4. Two pronouns in a row
Indirect first, direct second, and no gap between them: me lo, te lo, nos lo, os lo. And when both would begin with an l, the first one turns into se, purely to avoid the sound of le lo: Se lo dijo. Se la dio. They go in front of a conjugated verb and stuck to the end of an infinitive, a gerund or a positive command: quiero dárselo, está diciéndoselo, dáselo.
5. The small words that carry the weight
| point | rule of thumb | example |
|---|---|---|
| por | cause, route, exchange, rough time | Volvió por el mismo camino. |
| para | purpose, destination, deadline, opinion | Cortó ramas para no perderse. |
| que | the all-purpose relative | la carta que llevaba |
| donde | relative for a place | el sitio donde lo dejó |
| quien | relative for a person, after a preposition | el amo a quien servía |
| -mente | adverb from the feminine adjective | rápida + mente = rápidamente |
6. And the letter you learned to write last lesson
Querido with tú and un abrazo at the bottom. Estimado with usted and atentamente at the bottom. Choose once, and hold it to the signature.
What is left for B1
One thing above all: the subjunctive. Every time this course has steered you away from espero que estés bien, or cuando llegues, or quiero que vengas, it has been steering you around the same missing piece. B1 hands it to you, and with it come the real conditional sentences, indirect commands, and the whole apparatus of doubt, wish and emotion that Spanish carries in its verb endings rather than its adverbs. You have arrived at the door with the vocabulary and the tenses already in place, which is the sensible order.
Where the story stands, and what comes next
You have reached the middle of Part One. Chapter 26 of 52, and the exact centre of the book in more ways than one, because this is where the novel stops being a series of adventures on a road and starts folding back on itself.
What happens next is quickly told. Sancho rides down out of the mountains, loses the notebook with both letters in it, and realises he will have to deliver a letter he cannot read from a memory that, by his own account, sometimes loses his own name. At the inn he runs straight into the priest and the barber from his village, the same two men who burned Don Quixote’s library in lesson 18 and walled up the door of the room. The three of them hatch a plan: dress up as a distressed princess and a squire, ride into the Sierra Morena and lure the knight home by appealing to the one thing he cannot refuse, a lady in trouble. It works. Don Quixote comes home in a cage on an ox cart, convinced he has been enchanted, and Part One closes.
Which brings you to the end of A2, and it is worth stopping to look at what that means. When you started lesson 21 you could describe a person and say what you did every day. You can now narrate. You can tell a story with a foreground and a background, say what had already happened before it began, guess at what will happen next, describe what would happen in a world that does not exist, complain that something broke itself on you, and write a letter to a stranger without embarrassing yourself. That is the working machinery of everyday Spanish, and roughly 1200 words of vocabulary to run it on.
What is missing is the subjunctive, and B1 opens with it, because the next stretch of the novel is unusable without it. The priest and the barber spend their scenes wanting Don Quixote to do things, hoping he will not notice, and asking him to come home, and Spanish puts all of that wanting, hoping and asking into a verb form you have not met yet. It is the last big system in the language, and everything you have built in this block is the platform it stands on.
For now, though, do this. Go back to the story at the top of this page and read it again with the English column hidden. All 25 lines. That is a scene of Cervantes, and you are reading it.
Cervantes in the original
Y así, le dejaremos ir su camino, hasta la vuelta, que fue breve.
And so we shall let him go his way, until his return, which was brief.
This is the sentence that closes chapter 25 and lets Sancho out of the mountains, and it is a good one to end the block on, because almost everything you have learned since lesson 21 is working inside it. Watch what Cervantes does with time. Dejaremos is a future, because the narrator is standing in the present with you, deciding together what to look at next. Fue is a preterite, because the journey has already happened and he knows perfectly well how it turned out. So the same short sentence points forward and backward at once, and the little relative clause que fue breve, of exactly the kind you met in lesson 34, is where the two meet. It is also a small joke at the reader’s expense: he has just told you the ending of a journey that has not started. Cervantes does this constantly, reminding you that there is a man arranging the story, and it is one of the reasons the book still feels modern four hundred years later. Twelve words, three tenses, one relative, and a wink.