Level B1 · Chapter 46
The Giant’s Head
Morning comes to the inn and Don Quixote’s room is full of wine and burst wineskins. Sancho crawls about looking for the giant’s head, and nobody manages to convince him it does not exist.
What you will learn
- Deny and doubt what somebody else says.
- Use no creo que, dudo que, no es verdad que and es imposible que.
- Know why creo que takes the indicative and no creo que takes the subjunctive.
Before you read
Watch what happens to a sentence when you put a no in front of it. Creo que is followed by one form of the verb, and no creo que is followed by a different one. In English nothing at all happens. In Spanish that small no reaches across the que and changes the verb on the other side of it.The story in easy Spanish
Después de la pelea nocturna el cuarto estaba encharcado de vino, con cueros rotos y charcos por el suelo.
After the night’s fight the room was flooded with wine, with burst wineskins and puddles all over the floor.
El caballero, ya despierto, seguía sin entender absolutamente nada.
The knight, awake by now, still understood absolutely nothing.
Sancho andaba por el suelo, a cuatro patas, buscando algo.
Sancho was crawling about on the floor on all fours, looking for something.
«¿Dónde está la cabeza del gigante?», preguntaba una y otra vez.
"Where is the giant’s head?" he kept asking.
«Yo la he visto caer y no creo que se la lleve nadie.»
"I saw it fall and I do not believe anyone is carrying it off."
«No hay ningún gigante», dijo el cura, «y no es verdad que aquí haya entrado nadie esta noche.»
"There is no giant," said the priest, "and it is not true that anyone came in here last night."
«Eso que pisas es vino, y ese vino es del ventero.»
"What you are treading in is wine, and that wine belongs to the innkeeper."
«Pues yo dudo que el vino salga solo de la pared», contestó Sancho muy digno, sin levantarse del suelo.
"Well, I doubt wine comes out of a wall by itself," Sancho answered with great dignity, without getting up off the floor.
«Y no creo que mi señor se equivoque dos veces seguidas.»
"And I do not believe my master gets it wrong twice in a row."
«Ustedes no salen de aquí sin pagar», gritaba el ventero.
"You are not leaving here without paying," the innkeeper was shouting.
«No creo que estén locos, sino que me roban con excusas.»
"I do not think they are mad, I think they are robbing me with excuses."
El pobre hombre miraba sus cueros rotos y contaba el dinero perdido.
The poor man looked at his burst wineskins and counted up the money lost.
Don Quijote, mientras tanto, se dirigió muy serio a Dorotea.
Don Quixote, meanwhile, turned very solemnly to Dorotea.
Le anunció que su reino ya estaba libre de aquel monstruo.
He announced that her kingdom was now free of that monster.
El gigante espantoso había muerto aquella misma noche, en la oscuridad.
The frightful giant had died that very night, in the dark.
«No dudo que vuestra grandeza dice la verdad», respondió ella con la vista en el suelo.
"I do not doubt that your greatness speaks the truth," she answered, her eyes on the floor.
No estaba nada segura de poder aguantar la risa delante de todos.
She was not at all sure she could keep from laughing in front of everyone.
«Es imposible que un gigante entre en este cuarto», dijo el barbero, pero nadie le hizo caso.
"It is impossible for a giant to fit in this room," said the barber, but nobody paid him any attention.
«No digo que mi amo tenga razón siempre», añadió Sancho.
"I am not saying my master is always right," Sancho added.
«Pero tampoco creo que un cuero de vino sangre así.»
"But nor do I believe a wineskin bleeds like that."
El cura pensó que aquella respuesta era casi filosofía.
The priest thought that answer was very nearly philosophy.
Fuera ya era de día y la lluvia había parado del todo.
Outside it was daylight now and the rain had stopped completely.
Nadie dudaba de que había que salir de allí, y la única duda era quién pagaba el vino.
Nobody doubted that they had to get out of there, and the only doubt was who was paying for the wine.
Y de eso, curiosamente, nadie dijo ni una palabra.
And about that, curiously, nobody said a word.
Vocabulary
Doubting and denying
- dudar que
- to doubt that
- no creer que
- not to believe that
- no pensar que
- not to think that
- negar que
- to deny that
- no es verdad que
- it is not true that
- es imposible que
- it is impossible that
- puede que
- it may be that
- quizá
- perhaps
The room in the morning
- el charco
- the puddle
- encharcado
- flooded, awash
- a cuatro patas
- on all fours
- pisar
- to tread on
- roto
- burst, broken
- la sangre
- the blood
- la oscuridad
- the darkness
Being right and being wrong
- equivocarse
- to be wrong
- tener razón
- to be right
- la excusa
- the excuse
- robar
- to steal
- digno
- dignified
- seguro
- sure
- anunciar
- to announce
Doubt and denial: no creo que
No creo que se la lleve nadie.
Yo dudo que el vino salga solo de la pared.
No es verdad que aquí haya entrado nadie.
This is the use of the subjunctive that most courses teach first, and this course has deliberately left it until fourth, because teaching it first is what gives students the false idea that the subjunctive means doubt. It does not. It means the clause is not being asserted. Doubt is simply one of the ways a clause stops being asserted, and it is the easiest one to see.
1. The no reaches across the que
Say Creo que viene. You are asserting that he is coming, so the verb is indicative. Now put a no in front: No creo que venga. You are no longer asserting anything about his arrival, so Spanish takes the verb out of the indicative. English does nothing at all in this situation, which is why the mistake is so persistent.
| asserted, indicative | not asserted, subjunctive |
|---|---|
| Creo que viene esta noche. | No creo que venga esta noche. |
| Pienso que es verdad. | No pienso que sea verdad. |
| Me parece que tiene razón. | No me parece que tenga razón. |
| Es verdad que entró alguien. | No es verdad que haya entrado nadie. |
| Estoy seguro de que está aquí. | No estoy seguro de que esté aquí. |
| Digo que tiene razón. | No digo que tenga razón. |
Sancho uses the last pair himself: No digo que mi amo tenga razón siempre. He is carefully not asserting it, and the verb shows it.
2. The ones that need no negative at all
Some expressions carry the doubt in their own meaning, so they take the subjunctive whether or not there is a no anywhere near them.
| expression | English | example |
|---|---|---|
| dudar que | to doubt that | Dudo que el vino salga de la pared. |
| negar que | to deny that | Niega que haya entrado nadie. |
| es imposible que | it is impossible that | Es imposible que un gigante entre aquí. |
| es probable que | it is likely that | Es probable que llueva otra vez. |
| puede que | it may be that | Puede que tenga razón. |
| quizá, tal vez | perhaps | Quizá venga esta noche. |
Two footnotes on that last row. Puede que is always followed by a subjunctive and is one of the most useful phrases in spoken Spanish. Quizá and tal vez allow both moods: with the subjunctive you sound genuinely unsure, with the indicative you sound fairly confident. A lo mejor, which means the same thing in conversation, takes the indicative only.
3. Two negatives cancel and the indicative comes back
If the doubting verb is itself negated, the doubt disappears and so does the subjunctive. Dorotea does this in the story, and it is worth reading twice.
| Spanish | what it means |
|---|---|
| Dudo que diga la verdad. | I doubt he is telling the truth. |
| No dudo que dice la verdad. | I have no doubt he is telling the truth. |
| Niego que sea verdad. | I deny that it is true. |
| No niego que es verdad. | I do not deny that it is true. |
So when Dorotea says No dudo que vuestra grandeza dice la verdad, with a plain indicative, she is formally agreeing with every word Don Quixote has just said about killing a giant. It costs her nothing, because she has not actually claimed anything herself.
4. Questions sit on the fence
¿Crees que viene? is the normal way to ask, with the indicative, because you are asking about the world. ¿Crees que venga? is also possible and signals that you rather doubt it yourself. This is a nuance rather than a rule, and the indicative is the safe choice.
A joke in which nobody is lying
The reason this scene survives four hundred years of retelling is that nobody in it is lying. Don Quixote really did fight, for as long as he was asleep and with genuine effort. Sancho really did see something round fall to the floor, because a slashed wineskin collapses exactly like a severed head if you have already been told to expect one. The innkeeper really has lost his wine. Three accounts of one night, all truthful, and no two of them compatible. Cervantes does not adjudicate, and the chapter simply ends with the question of who pays.
That question is not comic filler. Wine was stored and moved in whole animal skins, sewn shut and coated inside with pitch, and an inn on a country road might hold its entire stock in a handful of them hanging in a back room. Slashing four of those is not a prank, it is the destruction of a small business’s working capital in a single night. Cervantes gives the innkeeper the most accurate sentence in the whole chapter, and it is the one about being robbed with excuses. The man who has lost money is the only person present with a firm grip on the facts.
Grammatically the scene is a gift, because it is built almost entirely out of people declining to assert things. The priest denies, Sancho doubts, the barber declares something impossible, and Dorotea, who is standing there in a stolen dress inventing a kingdom, produces the one flat indicative in the room by refusing to doubt a word of it. Read the dialogue again with that in mind and you can hear the moods doing the work that the plot pretends to do.
Cervantes in the original
la sangre y la fuente no es otra cosa que estos cueros que aquí están horadados y el vino tinto que nada en este aposento
the blood and the fountain are nothing but these wineskins here, pierced through, and the red wine swimming about this room.
The innkeeper taking Sancho’s version apart, and doing it with a flat, complete denial: no es otra cosa que, it is nothing other than. Notice how much sharper his Spanish is than anybody else’s in the scene. He names the objects, he names their condition, and he uses the technical word: horadados, pierced through, which is what a man says when he knows what a wineskin costs and how it is made. Two things to watch in the vocabulary. The word nada here is not the nada you already know, the one meaning nothing. It is the verb nadar, to swim, in the third person, and the image is the wine swimming around the room. Cervantes could have written que hay en este aposento and chose a verb that makes the floor move. And aposento is the ordinary word of the period for a room in an inn, a word you will meet again whenever this book goes indoors. The sentence is worth memorising as a model of denial, because it is exactly the shape the grammar of this lesson produces, four hundred years earlier.