The Princess Micomicona

What you will learn

• Form the present subjunctive of any regular verb.
• Say what you want somebody else to do.
• Use querer que, esperar que and ojalá without falling back on the English infinitive.

Before you read

The story in easy Spanish

Don Quijote llevaba semanas en Sierra Morena, medio desnudo entre las rocas, porque hacía penitencia por amor a Dulcinea.

Don Quixote had spent weeks in the Sierra Morena, half naked among the rocks, because he was doing penance for love of Dulcinea.

No quería marcharse de allí, aunque el cura y el barbero de su pueblo habían venido a buscarlo.

He did not want to leave the place, although the priest and the barber from his village had come to look for him.

«Yo quiero que vuelva a casa», dijo el cura con paciencia, «pero no quiere que nadie le mande nada.»

"I want him to go home," said the priest patiently, "but he does not want anyone giving him orders."

Don Quijote solo obedece las reglas de sus libros de caballerías.

Don Quixote obeys only the rules of his books of chivalry.

En aquellos días encontraron en el monte a una muchacha muy hermosa.

Around that time they found a very beautiful girl up in the hills.

Iba vestida de hombre y lloraba sentada junto a un arroyo.

She was dressed as a man and was crying beside a stream.

Se llamaba Dorotea y también huía, porque un noble le había prometido matrimonio y luego se había marchado.

Her name was Dorotea, and she too was running away, because a nobleman had promised to marry her and had then gone off.

Dorotea escuchó el plan del cura y sonrió despacio.

Dorotea listened to the priest and smiled slowly.

Era joven, pero había leído muchos libros de caballerías y sabía cómo hablan las princesas.

She was young, but she had read plenty of books of chivalry and knew how the princesses in them talk.

«Deje usted que lo haga yo», dijo la muchacha, «porque esto lo he leído muchas veces.»

"Let me do it," said the girl, "because I have read this scene many times."

«Quiero que me busquen un vestido rico y una mula, y seré una princesa perdida que viene de lejos.»

"I want you to find me a fine dress and a mule, and I shall be a lost princess who comes from far away."

Así nació la princesa Micomicona, señora del reino de Micomicón.

And so the Princess Micomicona was born, lady of the kingdom of Micomicón.

Su reino estaba en Guinea, muy al sur, según ella.

Her kingdom lay in Guinea, far to the south, according to her.

Un gigante espantoso se lo había quitado hacía mucho tiempo.

A frightful giant had taken it from her a long time ago.

Solo un caballero andante podía devolvérselo, y por eso ella venía a buscarlo.

Only a knight errant could win it back for her, and that was why she was coming to find one.

El barbero se puso una barba postiza de cola de buey.

The barber put on a false beard made from an ox tail.

Iba con ella como escudero y hablaba lo menos posible, porque en el pueblo conocían su voz.

He went along with her as her squire and spoke as little as possible, because in the village they knew his voice.

El cura los miraba y no sabía si reírse o santiguarse.

The priest watched them and did not know whether to laugh or cross himself.

Todo el engaño dependía de un vestido y de dos disfraces.

The whole trick depended on one dress and two disguises.

«Espero que salga bien», dijo el cura en voz baja, «y ojalá no se le ocurra pedir más pruebas.»

"I hope it goes well," said the priest quietly, "and let us hope he does not take it into his head to ask for more proof."

Dorotea fingía tan bien que hasta el barbero la creía.

Dorotea pretended so well that even the barber believed her.

Nadie sabía todavía cómo iba a terminar aquella comedia.

Nobody yet knew how that little play was going to end.

Sancho no estaba allí, porque había bajado al pueblo con la carta.

Sancho was not there, because he had gone down to the village with the letter.

Volvería pronto y se encontraría con una princesa nueva.

He would be back soon and would find himself facing a brand new princess.

El cura tenía miedo de que su amigo lo reconociera, así que decidió quedarse detrás, callado y bien tapado.

The priest was afraid his friend would recognise him, so he decided to stay at the back, silent and well covered up.

Vocabulary

The trick and the disguise

el engaño

the trick

el disfraz

the disguise

disfrazarse

to dress up as

fingir

to pretend

la barba postiza

the false beard

la comedia

the play, the act

la prueba

the proof

The world of the books of chivalry

el reino

the kingdom

la princesa

the princess

el gigante

the giant

el caballero andante

the knight errant

la doncella

the maiden

la promesa

the promise

espantoso

frightful

Wanting, hoping, wishing

querer que

to want somebody to

esperar que

to hope that

desear que

to wish that

preferir que

to prefer that

ojalá

let us hope, if only

necesitar que

to need somebody to

el deseo

the wish

The present subjunctive: the form, and wanting

Yo quiero que vuelva a casa.

Quiero que me busquen un vestido rico y una mula.

Espero que salga bien.

This is the door into B1, so it is worth going slowly. Everything you have learned until now has been the indicative, the mood Spanish uses to report what is the case. The subjunctive is the mood it uses for what somebody wants to be the case, and Spanish will not let you say the second thing with the machinery of the first.

1. The shape of the sentence

Look again at Quiero que vuelva a casa. There are two people in it. I am the one doing the wanting, and he is the one doing the going home. Between them sits que. That three part shape, subject one plus que plus a different subject two, is the trigger. If both halves have the same subject there is no que and no subjunctive at all, just an infinitive: Quiero volver a casa, I want to go home myself.

2. How to build it, in one move

Take the yo form of the ordinary present, cut off the final o, and add the endings of the other family. An -ar verb takes -er style endings, and an -er or -ir verb takes -ar style endings. Spanish teachers call it changing sides, and it is the whole trick.

Notice that yo and él are identical, exactly as they were in the imperfect. Spanish accepts the ambiguity and lets the context sort it out.

3. The irregulars are less work than they look

Because the form is built from the yo of the present, every verb whose yo is odd hands that oddness straight over, and you get the whole set free.

The verbs that break in the middle keep breaking: querer gives quiera, poder gives pueda, volver gives vuelva, and as in the present the nosotros and vosotros forms flatten out again, queramos, podamos, volvamos. Spelling changes happen for the ear, not for the grammar: buscar gives busque so the hard k sound survives, llegar gives llegue, empezar gives empiece.

Six verbs simply have to be learned, and they are the six you will use most: ser gives sea, ir gives vaya, haber gives haya, saber gives sepa, dar gives dé with an accent to keep it apart from the preposition, and estar gives esté.

4. What sets it off in this lesson

Verbs of wanting and hoping, and only those, for now. Querer que, esperar que, desear que, preferir que, necesitar que. Plus one word that needs no verb in front of it at all: ojalá. It came into Spanish from Arabic, where it meant if God wills, and it now works as a bare wish with the subjunctive stuck straight onto it. Ojalá salga bien. Ojalá vuelva pronto. No que required, though you may add one.

And you have met this form before without being told. Remember espero que estés bien, the phrase lesson 41 said you were not ready for? You are ready now. That is the whole reason it was held back.

A kingdom that does not exist, and a name that admits it

The name is the joke, and Cervantes puts it in the first line of the plan so that the reader is in on it from the start. Mico is a small monkey. Repeat it, dress it as a place name, and you get Micomicón, the kingdom of the little monkeys, whose lady must therefore be the Princess Micomicona. Every reader in 1605 heard that instantly. Don Quixote, who has read a thousand kingdoms with names built exactly this way, hears nothing but a perfectly ordinary geography.

The scene Dorotea performs is not improvised either. The wandering princess who arrives from a distant land, kneels before a knight and begs him to destroy a giant is one of the fixed set pieces of the romances of chivalry, as recognisable to that audience as a courtroom scene is to us. What makes the episode more than a prank is who is performing it. Dorotea is not a simple country girl being used by clever men. She is a reader. She has read the same books Don Quixote has read, and within a page she has taken control of the plan the priest invented, improved it, and cast herself in the lead. The men become her supporting cast, the barber gets an ox tail glued to his chin, and the priest is left on the sidelines not knowing whether to laugh or cross himself.

Her disguise has a second layer with a history of its own. When they find her she is dressed as a man, and the woman in male clothing was one of the most popular devices in Spanish Golden Age theatre, so popular that moralists campaigned for years to have it banned from the stage. Audiences adored it. Cervantes uses it and then folds it over: a woman disguised as a man is redisguised as a princess in order to trap a man who has disguised himself as a knight.

And there is one last irony worth holding on to. The priest is the same man who, back in lesson 18, went through Don Quixote’s library and burned the books of chivalry in the yard because he believed they had driven his friend mad. His cure, now, is to build one. He stages a book of chivalry around a living man in the hope of walking him home inside it. From here to the end of Part One, nobody in this novel can tell any longer which side of the story they are standing on.

Cervantes in the original

la princesa Micomicona, porque, llamándose su reino Micomicón, claro está que ella se ha de llamar así

the Princess Micomicona, because, her kingdom being called Micomicón, it is clear that she must be called that.

This is the priest inventing a royal name in real time and then justifying it with a piece of logic so tidy that nobody notices it is circular. Her kingdom is called Micomicón, therefore she must be Micomicona. The reasoning is impeccable and rests on nothing, which is a fair description of the entire plan. Grammatically it is a useful step to stand on just before the subjunctive arrives. The sentence hangs on a causal clause, llamándose su reino Micomicón, a gerund doing the work English would give to a because clause, and every verb in it is indicative, because the priest is not wishing for anything here. He is reporting a fact, even if the fact is one he made up thirty seconds earlier. Compare that with the sentences in the story above, where somebody wants something and the verb changes shape. Note also se ha de llamar, an older way of saying tiene que llamarse, still alive in formal Spanish and very common in Cervantes. And note that Cervantes never once explains the joke about mico. He trusts you to hear it.