Level B2 · Chapter 69
Down into Montesinos’ Cave
Don Quixote has himself lowered into a cave in La Mancha on a rope. Half an hour later they haul him up asleep, and he says they have ruined the finest life in the world.
What you will learn
- Build the imperfect subjunctive of any verb, regular or irregular.
- Choose between the -ra and -se forms knowing they mean the same thing.
- Recognise the past subjunctive after requests, orders and comparisons.
Before you read
You have been reading and using the imperfect subjunctive since the middle of B1 without anybody stopping to show you how it is built. This lesson stops. Almost every verb in this text that follows a que ends in -ase, -ese or -iese. Watch for them and, more useful still, watch for where each one comes from.The story in easy Spanish
Camino de Aragón, don Quijote quiso conocer la cueva de Montesinos, de la que se contaban maravillas en toda la Mancha.
On the road to Aragon, Don Quixote wanted to see Montesinos’ cave, about which wonders were told all over La Mancha.
Buscó un guía que lo llevase hasta la boca del agujero y le pagó por adelantado.
He looked for a guide who could take him to the mouth of the hole and paid him in advance.
Compró después cien brazas de soga en el primer pueblo que encontraron por el camino.
He then bought a hundred fathoms of rope in the first village they came to on the road.
El guía le rogó que no bajara, y Sancho le rogó lo mismo dos veces.
The guide begged him not to go down, and Sancho begged him the same thing twice.
La entrada era ancha y estaba cubierta de zarzas y de matas muy juntas.
The entrance was wide and covered with brambles and bushes growing very close together.
Don Quijote las tuvo que cortar a espadazos hasta abrir un hueco por donde cupiera un hombre.
Don Quixote had to hack them away with his sword until he opened a gap a man could fit through.
Del fondo salieron volando cuervos y murciélagos, tantos y tan juntos que lo tiraron al suelo.
Crows and bats came flying out of the depths, so many and so close together that they knocked him to the ground.
Si él hubiera sido supersticioso, dijo después, habría tomado aquello por muy mala señal.
If he had been superstitious, he said afterwards, he would have taken that for a very bad sign.
Sancho le pidió que se santiguase y que dejase aquel agujero en paz.
Sancho asked him to cross himself and leave that hole alone.
Dijo que no era razón que un cristiano se metiese bajo tierra como si fuera una botija.
He said it was not right for a Christian to stuff himself underground as if he were a jug.
Don Quijote le mandó que atase la soga y que callase de una vez.
Don Quixote ordered him to tie the rope and be quiet once and for all.
Se ató la cuerda por debajo de los brazos y se acercó despacio al borde.
He tied the rope under his arms and moved slowly up to the edge.
Antes de descolgarse pidió a los dos hombres que fuesen soltando cuerda poco a poco.
Before letting himself down he asked the two men to pay out rope little by little.
Les pidió también que no lo dejasen caer de golpe contra las piedras del fondo.
He also asked them not to let him drop suddenly onto the stones at the bottom.
Y que estuviesen atentos por si él daba voces desde abajo pidiendo que lo subiesen.
And to stay alert in case he shouted from below asking to be pulled up.
Sancho y el guía lo bajaron despacio, con los pies apoyados en una piedra grande.
Sancho and the guide lowered him slowly, with their feet braced against a large stone.
Cuando se acabó la soga, oyeron que la voz del caballero se apagaba poco a poco.
When the rope ran out, they heard the knight’s voice fade little by little.
Después ya no oyeron nada, ni una palabra ni un golpe ni una piedra suelta.
After that they heard nothing at all, not a word, not a blow, not a loose stone.
Sancho lloró a su amo como si estuviera muerto y quiso que lo subieran enseguida.
Sancho wept for his master as if he were dead, and wanted him hauled up at once.
Tiraron de la soga y salió sola, sin peso ninguno en la punta.
They pulled on the rope and it came up on its own, with no weight at all on the end.
Aquello los asustó mucho más que el silencio de los minutos anteriores.
That frightened them a great deal more than the silence of the previous minutes had.
Volvieron a echarla dentro y esperaron media hora larga sentados en la hierba.
They threw it back in and waited a good half hour, sitting on the grass.
Ninguno de los dos se atrevió a decir en voz alta lo que estaba pensando.
Neither of them dared say out loud what he was thinking.
El guía dijo por fin que se marcharía a su casa si aquello duraba mucho más.
The guide said at last that he would go home if this went on much longer.
Por fin notaron peso en la cuerda y tiraron de ella con todas sus fuerzas.
At last they felt weight on the rope and pulled on it with all their strength.
Salió don Quijote con los ojos cerrados, como si durmiese un sueño muy hondo.
Out came Don Quixote with his eyes shut, as if he were sleeping a very deep sleep.
Lo sacudieron y lo llamaron por su nombre hasta que abrió los ojos y se estiró.
They shook him and called him by name until he opened his eyes and stretched.
Se estiró igual que quien despierta de un sueño largo y pesado en una buena cama.
He stretched exactly like someone waking from a long, heavy sleep in a good bed.
Lo primero que dijo fue que Dios les perdonase lo que acababan de hacerle.
The first thing he said was that God forgive them for what they had just done to him.
Dijo que lo habían sacado de la vida más sabrosa que ningún hombre hubiese visto jamás.
He said they had dragged him out of the most delightful life any man had ever seen.
Pidió de comer, se sentó en la hierba y anunció que iba a contarles lo de allá abajo.
He asked for food, sat down on the grass and announced that he would tell them about down there.
Vocabulary
The mouth of the cave
- la zarza
- the bramble
- el agujero
- the hole
- el borde
- the edge
- hondo
- deep
- el cuervo
- the crow
- el murciélago
- the bat
- a espadazos
- with sword blows
- la maravilla
- the marvel
The rope
- la soga
- the rope
- la braza
- the fathom
- atar
- to tie
- soltar
- to pay out, to let go
- descolgarse
- to lower yourself down
- tirar de
- to pull on
- el peso
- the weight
- la punta
- the end, the tip
Two men waiting, afraid
- santiguarse
- to cross yourself
- la botija
- the earthenware jug
- sacudir
- to shake somebody
- apagarse
- to fade away
- sabroso
- delicious
- de golpe
- suddenly
- por adelantado
- in advance
- estar atento
- to stay alert
The imperfect subjunctive: how it is built
Buscó un guía que lo llevase hasta la boca.
Le mandó que atase la soga y que callase.
Lloró a su amo como si estuviera muerto.
Of all the Spanish tenses this is the one with no exceptions at all. Not one verb escapes the rule, and the rule has three steps.
1. Take the third person plural of the preterite
llevaron, comieron, pidieron, estuvieron, fueron, hicieron, dijeron, quisieron. If you know the preterite, you already know this tense, including every irregular in the language.
2. Remove -ron
lleva-, comie-, pidie-, estuvie-, fue-, hicie-, dije-, quisie-.
3. Add the endings
| -se set | -ra set | |
|---|---|---|
| yo | llevase | llevara |
| tú | llevases | llevaras |
| él, ella | llevase | llevara |
| nosotros | llevásemos | lleváramos |
| vosotros | llevaseis | llevarais |
| ellos | llevasen | llevaran |
The two sets mean exactly the same thing and are freely interchangeable. Cervantes leans towards -se, which is why this text is full of llevase and atase. Modern spoken Spanish leans towards -ra. Pick one set, use it consistently, and be able to read the other.
Where it turns up
| trigger | from this lesson |
|---|---|
| an order or request in the past | Le mandó que atase la soga. |
| a thing not yet identified | Buscó un guía que lo llevase. |
| a judgement in the past | No era razón que se metiese bajo tierra. |
| como si, always | Lloró como si estuviera muerto. |
| an if that is not true | Si hubiera sido supersticioso… |
Como si deserves its own line. It takes the imperfect subjunctive one hundred per cent of the time, in every register, with no exceptions, even when the main verb is in the present: Habla como si fuera el rey.
A cave you can still visit
The cave of Montesinos is a real place. It sits in the Lagunas de Ruidera, in the province of Albacete, roughly where Cervantes puts it, and you can walk down into it today. This matters more than it looks. The entire novel so far has taken place in a landscape the first readers knew, and here the most fantastical episode in the book is pinned to a hole in the ground that a reader in Toledo could go and see for himself.
Cervantes then does something he has not done before. He has his fictional Arab historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli, write a note in the margin saying that he cannot believe this adventure happened, that it does not fit anything else in the knight’s life, and that he refuses to say whether it is true or false, leaving the reader to decide. A narrator undercutting his own chapter, in the chapter itself, is the sort of thing that gets called modern when a novelist does it now.
Notice, too, what the men above ground go through. Half an hour of silence, a rope that comes up empty, and two ordinary people sitting on the grass not daring to say out loud that they think he is dead. The comic episode is happening below. Above, it is simply frightening, and Cervantes gives that side of it as much space as the marvels.
Cervantes in the original
Iba don Quijote dando voces que le diesen soga y más soga, y ellos se la daban poco a poco
Don Quixote went on shouting for them to give him rope and more rope, and they paid it out to him little by little
From II, 22, and it is the whole descent in one line. Two pieces of machinery are working here and both belong to this lesson. Diesen is the imperfect subjunctive of dar, built exactly as the rule says: dieron minus -ron plus the ending. It appears because dando voces que is a request, and a request in the past drags the subjunctive after it. The second is iba dando, a verb chain that turns a single act of shouting into a continuous one, the way went on shouting does in English. Notice also how much narrative Cervantes packs into eighteen words. The knight is disappearing into the earth demanding more rope, and the two men above are paying it out poco a poco, which is precisely what he told them to do and also, read again, exactly what frightened people do when they do not want to let go.