The Battle of the Wineskins

What you will learn

• Chain the moments of a story together without saying y luego every time.
• Use de pronto, mientras and en cuanto in exactly the right place.
• Tell an action scene so that the order of events is clear.

Before you read

The story in easy Spanish

Volvamos unas horas atrás, a la noche de la venta, cuando era ya muy tarde y casi todos dormían.

Let us go back a few hours, to that night at the inn, when it was very late and almost everyone was asleep.

Abajo, en la sala, unos leían y otros dormitaban junto al fuego, mientras arriba don Quijote descansaba.

Downstairs in the main room, some were reading and others were dozing by the fire, while upstairs Don Quixote rested.

De pronto se oyeron golpes muy fuertes en el techo.

Suddenly there came very heavy blows from the ceiling.

Eran golpes seguidos y secos, como de espada contra algo blando.

They were steady, dry blows, like a sword striking something soft.

Mientras los demás se levantaban, Sancho salió corriendo escaleras arriba y gritaba que su amo mataba al gigante.

While the others were getting up, Sancho ran up the stairs shouting that his master was killing the giant.

En cuanto abrieron la puerta, vieron una escena extraordinaria.

The moment they opened the door, they saw an extraordinary scene.

Don Quijote estaba de pie en camisa, con la espada en la mano.

Don Quixote was standing there in his shirt, sword in hand.

Daba tajos al aire y a la pared, sin parar.

He was slashing at the air and at the wall, without stopping.

Tenía los ojos abiertos, pero estaba profundamente dormido.

His eyes were open, but he was fast asleep.

Peleaba dentro de su sueño contra el gigante Pandafilando y, además, iba ganando la batalla.

Inside his dream he was fighting the giant Pandafilando, and what is more, he was winning.

Los cueros colgaban de la pared, rotos, y el vino tinto corría por el suelo mientras Sancho lo miraba.

The wineskins hung on the wall, slashed open, and the red wine ran across the floor while Sancho stared at it.

El pobre escudero se llevaba las dos manos a la cabeza, desesperado.

The poor squire clutched his head with both hands, in despair.

«Esa es la sangre del gigante», decía Sancho a gritos.

"That is the giant’s blood," Sancho was shouting.

El cura cogió un caldero de agua fría y se lo echó encima al caballero de un solo golpe.

The priest grabbed a bucket of cold water and threw it over the knight in one go.

En cuanto el agua lo tocó, don Quijote se despertó, pero no del todo, y siguió hablando de gigantes.

As soon as the water touched him, Don Quixote woke up, though not completely, and went on talking about giants.

Mientras el ventero contaba sus cueros perdidos y juraba, nadie le hacía caso, porque nadie sabía qué decirle.

While the innkeeper counted his ruined wineskins and swore, nobody paid him any attention, because nobody knew what to say.

Don Quijote se arrodilló entonces delante del cura, lo tomó por la princesa y le prometió su reino.

Don Quixote then knelt down in front of the priest, mistook him for the princess and promised her the kingdom back.

Después dijo, muy tranquilo, que la aventura ya estaba terminada para siempre.

Afterwards he said, perfectly calmly, that the adventure was over for good.

Mientras tanto, el agua y el vino corrían juntos hacia la puerta.

Meanwhile the water and the wine ran together towards the door.

En cuanto amaneció, empezó la discusión sobre quién pagaba aquello.

As soon as day broke, the argument began about who was paying for it.

Y esa discusión, como ya sabes, no la ganó nadie.

And that argument, as you already know, nobody won.

La venta no volvió a ser la misma después de aquella noche.

The inn was never the same again after that night.

Vocabulary

Marking the moment

de pronto

suddenly

de repente

all of a sudden

mientras

while

mientras tanto

meanwhile

en cuanto

as soon as

entonces

then, at that point

al final

in the end

al día siguiente

the next day

The sleeping fight

el tajo

the sword stroke

la espada

the sword

el golpe

the blow

blando

soft

el sueño

the dream

profundamente dormido

fast asleep

de pie

standing

The disaster and the cold water

el caldero

the bucket

echar agua

to throw water

dormitar

to doze

tomar por

to mistake for

del todo

completely

hacer caso

to pay attention

la discusión

the argument

The connectors that hold a story together

De pronto se oyeron golpes muy fuertes en el techo.

Mientras los demás se levantaban, Sancho salió corriendo.

En cuanto el agua lo tocó, don Quijote se despertó.

You have had the four past tenses since lesson 25 and you can already narrate. What this lesson adds is the joinery. A story told with nothing but y luego and después reads like a list of events, and the difference between a list and a scene is almost entirely in these dozen words.

1. The three jobs

Connectors of time do one of three things: they interrupt, they overlap, or they chain.

Notice how they change the pace. The interrupters are what make an action scene feel fast, because they cut off whatever was going on. The overlappers slow it down and widen the frame, which is why Cervantes uses one to pull your eye away from the shouting and down to the wine spreading across the floor. And the chainers are the ones that make consequences feel inevitable: en cuanto el agua lo tocó tells you that the waking was caused by the water, and no other word in the sentence has to do that work.

2. Each one with the grammar it demands

Two of these are worth extra attention because English blurs them. Mientras takes a verb and durante takes a noun, where English says while and during and lets people muddle them: ✗ durante el ventero contaba is not Spanish. And después stands alone while después de needs something after it, so después salieron and después de salir are both right and después salir is not.

3. Where they sit in the sentence

Spanish is generous here. Most of these can open the sentence, sit in the middle, or come at the end, and the comma follows them when they open.

Putting the connector first is the more literary choice and it keeps the reader oriented, which matters most in a fast scene. Cervantes does it constantly.

4. One warning about the future

Everything in this lesson is in the indicative, because the whole story has already happened. But cuando, en cuanto, hasta que and mientras behave differently when they point forward at something that has not occurred yet, and there they take the subjunctive: en cuanto llegue el agua, as soon as the water arrives. That is lesson 60 and it deserves its own page. For now, hold on to the simple version: past narration, indicative.

The madness that gets into the dream

This is one of the two or three most famous scenes in the book, and almost every retelling gets it slightly wrong. The usual version is that Don Quixote mistakes the wineskins for a giant, in the way that he mistook windmills for giants back in lesson 20. That is not what happens. He is asleep. His eyes are open, which sleepwalkers’ eyes sometimes are, and he is fighting Pandafilando inside a dream while his body slashes at whatever is in front of it.

The distinction matters more than it looks. In the windmill episode the madness is in his interpretation of the world: he sees something real and reads it wrongly. Here the world has dropped out altogether. The daytime delusion has burrowed into his sleep and now runs without any external prompt at all. It is a much darker piece of writing, and Cervantes gives it no commentary whatsoever.

There is a further turn of the screw that is easy to miss. Pandafilando de la Fosca Vista does not exist even inside the fiction. Dorotea invented him the previous afternoon, in a courtyard, to get Don Quixote walking in the direction of his own village. So the giant he is dreaming about, and defeating, is a lie told to him a few hours earlier by a woman in a borrowed dress. He wins. And when he wakes, half wakes really, he kneels to the priest, takes him for the princess, and reports the victory. The lie has come back to its authors with interest.

One last thing worth noticing, since this lesson is about how a scene is put together. Cervantes does not tell you Don Quixote is asleep until after he has shown you the sword, the shirt, the slashing and the open eyes. The explanation arrives a beat late, exactly where a modern novelist would put it, and for a moment the reader is as lost as Sancho on the stairs.

Cervantes in the original

Y había dado tantas cuchilladas en los cueros, creyendo que las daba en el gigante, que todo el aposento estaba lleno de vino

And he had dealt so many slashes to the wineskins, believing he was dealing them to the giant, that the whole room was full of wine.

The whole battle in one sentence, and built exactly the way this lesson describes. Start with the tense: había dado is a pluperfect, and it is doing precise work. By the time the door opens and anybody sees anything, the damage has already been done. Cervantes could have narrated the slashing as it happened and chose instead to show you the aftermath and reach backwards, which is why the scene lands as a discovery rather than a report. Then the gerund. Creyendo que las daba en el gigante is functioning as a mientras clause, two things running at the same time, the strokes falling on the skins and the belief that they are falling on the giant. Spanish uses the gerund for this constantly and it is lighter than a full clause with mientras, which is why good Spanish prose is full of them. Finally the frame tantas... que..., so many that, which chains cause to result without needing a por eso. Three different ways of joining events, in one sentence, doing the job that this lesson gives a dozen connectors to. And notice what he does not tell you here: nowhere in the sentence does he say Don Quixote was asleep.