Level B2 · Chapter 70
Dulcinea Asks for Six Reales
Don Quixote tells what he saw in the cave: a crystal palace, a talking corpse, and an enchanted Dulcinea asking him for a small loan.
What you will learn
- Talk about something that is not the case and say what would happen if it were.
- Build the si sentence with the two tenses it requires.
- Tell apart what is not true now from what was not true then.
Before you read
This text contains eight sentences built on si. As you read, watch two things. First, what tense follows the si itself, and second, what tense sits in the other half of the sentence. They are never the same, and the pairing is fixed. Spanish is far stricter about this than English, and one particular arrangement is simply forbidden.The story in easy Spanish
Recién sacado de la cueva, don Quijote contó que allá abajo se había quedado dormido.
Just out of the cave, Don Quixote told them that down there he had fallen asleep.
Dijo que se despertó en un prado verde con un palacio de cristal en medio.
He said he woke in a green meadow with a crystal palace standing in the middle of it.
De la puerta de aquel palacio salió un anciano de barba blanca hasta la cintura.
Out of the door of that palace came an old man with a white beard down to his waist.
No llevaba arma ninguna y caminaba despacio, con un rosario de cuentas gordas en la mano.
He carried no weapon at all and walked slowly, with a rosary of fat beads in his hand.
Era Montesinos, dijo, que llevaba siglos encantado allá abajo con toda su parentela.
It was Montesinos, he said, who had been under a spell down there for centuries along with all his kin.
Si aquel palacio estuviera en la superficie, añadió, sería la mayor maravilla de España.
If that palace stood above ground, he added, it would be the greatest wonder in Spain.
Pero como está bajo tierra, nadie lo cree y nadie baja nunca a verlo.
But since it lies underground, nobody believes in it and nobody ever goes down to see it.
Montesinos lo llevó a una sala fría donde había un sepulcro de mármol muy grande.
Montesinos took him to a cold hall where there was a very large marble tomb.
Encima estaba tendido Durandarte, muerto desde hacía quinientos años y hablando en voz baja.
On top of it lay Durandarte, dead for five hundred years and talking under his breath.
Se quejaba de su suerte como si acabara de morirse aquella misma mañana de mayo.
He was complaining of his lot as if he had died that very morning in May.
Montesinos le prometió que un caballero vendría por fin a deshacer aquel encanto tan largo.
Montesinos promised him that a knight would come at last to break that very long spell.
Durandarte solo suspiró y dijo que hubiera paciencia y que se barajase de nuevo.
Durandarte merely sighed and said to have patience and shuffle the cards again.
Después pasaron tres labradoras saltando por el prado, alegres, como si fueran a una fiesta.
Then three peasant women went past, skipping across the meadow, as cheerful as if they were off to a party.
Don Quijote reconoció en una de ellas a Dulcinea del Toboso, saltando como las otras.
In one of them Don Quixote recognised Dulcinea of El Toboso, skipping along like the rest.
Estaba encantada en la misma aldeana que Sancho le había señalado en el camino.
She was enchanted into the very village girl that Sancho had pointed out to him on the road.
Una compañera se le acercó de parte de la señora y le habló muy deprisa.
One of her companions came up to him on her lady’s behalf and spoke to him very fast.
Le pidió, en nombre de Dulcinea, seis reales prestados sobre un faldellín de algodón nuevo.
She asked him, in Dulcinea’s name, for a loan of six reales against a new cotton underskirt.
Don Quijote dijo que si hubiera tenido seis reales se los habría dado enteros.
Don Quixote said that if he had had six reales he would have given her all six.
Como solo llevaba cuatro encima, le dio los cuatro y se disculpó por los otros dos.
As he only had four on him, he gave her the four and apologised for the other two.
Sancho se llevó las manos a la cabeza y no supo qué decir al principio.
Sancho clapped his hands to his head and did not know what to say at first.
Dijo después que si su amo no estuviera loco, no contaría una cosa así.
He then said that if his master were not mad, he would not be telling them a thing like that.
Y que si aquello fuera verdad, las princesas encantadas no empeñarían la ropa por cuatro reales.
And that if it were true, enchanted princesses would not be pawning their clothes for four reales.
Don Quijote contestó que había estado tres días y tres noches allá abajo.
Don Quixote replied that he had been down there three days and three nights.
Los otros dos le juraron que no había pasado ni una hora desde que bajó.
The other two swore to him that not even an hour had passed since he went down.
Él dijo que si el tiempo corriera igual bajo tierra que arriba, no habría encantamiento posible.
He said that if time ran the same underground as above, no enchantment would be possible at all.
Sancho pensó que, si él contara aquello en su pueblo, nadie lo dejaría entrar en la iglesia.
Sancho thought that if he told a story like that in his village, they would not let him into the church.
Desde aquel día ni el escudero ni el guía supieron qué pensar de su amo.
From that day on neither the squire nor the guide knew what to think of their master.
El detalle de los seis reales lo estropeaba todo, porque era demasiado pequeño para ser mentira.
The detail of the six reales ruined everything, because it was too small to be a lie.
Un embustero habría inventado coronas de oro y caballos con las crines de plata.
A liar would have invented crowns of gold and horses with manes of silver.
No habría inventado un préstamo de aldea con una prenda de algodón de por medio.
He would not have invented a village loan with a cotton garment left as security.
Y sin embargo el caballero lo contaba muy serio, sin adornar nada y sin reírse.
And yet the knight told it perfectly gravely, embellishing nothing and never laughing.
Sancho decidió creerle a medias, que era lo único que le dejaba seguir a su lado.
Sancho decided to half believe him, which was the only thing that let him stay at his side.
Vocabulary
The palace down below
- el cristal
- crystal, glass
- el sepulcro
- the tomb
- el mármol
- marble
- la parentela
- the kinfolk
- la superficie
- the surface
- la cintura
- the waist
- el encantamiento
- the enchantment
- suspirar
- to sigh
Village money
- el préstamo
- the loan
- prestado
- on loan
- empeñar
- to pawn
- la prenda
- the pledge
- el faldellín
- the underskirt
- el algodón
- cotton
- la corona
- the crown coin
- la plata
- silver
Believing and not believing
- el embustero
- the liar
- adornar
- to embellish
- jurar
- to swear
- estropear
- to ruin
- a medias
- halfway, partly
- la aldeana
- the village woman
- barajar
- to shuffle the cards
- la crin
- the mane
Si tuviera seis reales, se los daría
Si aquel palacio estuviera en la superficie, sería la maravilla de España.
Si aquello fuera verdad, las princesas no empeñarían la ropa.
Si hubiera tenido seis reales, se los habría dado enteros.
Spanish si sentences come in three shapes, and the shape you choose says how possible you think the thing is. The two halves are locked together: pick the first and the second is decided for you.
Type 1, it may well happen
Si baja a la cueva, verá el palacio. Present indicative after si, future in the other half. This is the one you already know.
Type 2, it is not the case now
Si aquel palacio estuviera en la superficie, sería la maravilla de España. Imperfect subjunctive after si, conditional in the other half. The palace is not above ground, and the speaker knows it. This is the lesson.
Type 3, it was not the case then
Si hubiera tenido seis reales, se los habría dado enteros. Pluperfect subjunctive after si, compound conditional in the other half. He did not have six, so nothing can be done about it now. You will meet this one properly later, but this text uses it twice and it is worth recognising.
| after si | other half | meaning |
|---|---|---|
| presente | futuro | real possibility |
| imperfecto de subjuntivo | condicional | contrary to fact now |
| pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo | condicional compuesto | contrary to fact in the past |
The rule with no exceptions
After si meaning if, Spanish never uses the future and never uses the conditional. Not once, in any register, in any century. ✗ Si tendría dinero is not a thing. The conditional lives in the other half of the sentence and only there. The halves can swap order freely, and when the si half comes second the comma disappears: Sería la maravilla de España si estuviera en la superficie.
Two neighbours worth knowing. Como si always takes types 2 or 3 and never anything else. And si can also mean whether, as in No sé si es verdad, in which case none of these rules apply because it is not a condition at all.
Four reales and the price of a lie
A real was small change. Four of them came to something like two days of a labourer’s wage, enough for bread and not much else, and pawning a garment against a loan of that size was an entirely ordinary transaction in a Spanish village. Cervantes knew the sums exactly. He had spent years as a tax collector, chasing amounts of this order from people who did not have them, and had been imprisoned over the accounts.
That is what makes the joke work. Everything else Don Quixote reports from the cave belongs to chivalric romance, where distances are leagues and treasure comes in crowns of gold. Then an enchanted princess sends a friend over to borrow four reales against an underskirt, and the register collapses. Sancho sees the collapse immediately and calls the whole thing a lie, and he is almost certainly right.
Almost. The detail is too poor, too specific and too humiliating for an inventor to have chosen it, and Cervantes plants that objection in the reader’s mind without ever writing it down. From this chapter onward Don Quixote himself is no longer sure what he saw, and the cave becomes the thing he refers back to whenever his belief needs propping up. It is the hinge of the second part: the point where the knight starts to need his own madness to be true.
Cervantes in the original
Paciencia y barajar
Patience, and shuffle the cards again
Durandarte says this in II, 23, and it is three words carrying an entire attitude. He has been enchanted on a marble slab for five centuries. Montesinos leans over him with the good news that a knight has finally arrived to break the spell, the moment the whole legend has been waiting for, and the answer is a card table expression: deal again. Not gratitude, not hope, not even interest. Barajar is what you do when the hand was bad and there is nothing to be done but reshuffle, and Spanish still uses the phrase exactly that way today, meaning put up with it and start over. Cervantes gives the most anticlimactic line in the novel to the character with the strongest claim to a dramatic one, and the joke is not that Durandarte is rude. It is that five hundred years of anything would produce precisely this tone.