Read El sí de las niñas in Spanishwith every sentence explained

El sí de las niñas by Leandro Fernández de Moratín was first published in 1806. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked intermediate and filed under romance. It runs to about 19,200 words.

A bride of sixteen. A groom of fifty-nine. One night at a country inn to set things right.

Doña Irene has arranged a splendid match for her daughter Paquita, just out of convent school: Don Diego, a wealthy, kind-hearted gentleman of fifty-nine. Paquita, raised to obey, does not dare to say no. But she has secretly given her heart to a dashing young officer who calls himself Don Félix, and while the travellers stop for the night at an inn in Alcalá de Henares, he is already riding to find her.

Over a few hours of whispered conversations, hidden identities, intercepted letters and creaking doors, everyone's secrets come to light, and Don Diego makes a discovery that touches him more closely than he could imagine.

First staged in 1806, Leandro Fernández de Moratín's comedy is a witty plea for young people's right to choose whom they love. This short play is the most famous Spanish comedy of the Enlightenment and a school favourite.

Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Spanish. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:

• a natural translation of that exact sentence,
• a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
• the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
• all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.

It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday Spanish feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.