Spanish · Beginner
Read José in Spanishwith every sentence explained
Armando Palacio Valdés · 1885
Free to start · iPhone, iPad & Mac
About the book
José by Armando Palacio Valdés was first published in 1885. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked beginner and filed under romance. It runs to about 42,300 words.
A young fisherman, a brand-new boat and a girl whose mother wants a richer match.
In Rodillero, a small fishing village on the coast of Asturias, José is a young boat skipper, honest, cheerful and respected by every sailor in the fleet. His own new boat is almost finished, and as soon as it is ready he hopes to marry sweet, dark-eyed Elisa.
But Elisa's mother, the stingy and calculating señá Isabel, who runs the village shop with her pompous schoolmaster husband, has bigger plans for her daughter than a poor fisherman. Between the dangers of the sea, the gossip of the village and the friendship of Don Fernando de Meira, a proud old nobleman who has lost everything but his name, José will have to fight for his boat and for the girl he loves.
Short, simple and full of salt air, Armando Palacio Valdés's José has long been a favourite first novel for learners of Spanish.
- Author
- Armando Palacio Valdés
- First published
- 1885
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Beginner
- Genre
- Romance
- Length
- About 42,300 words
How it opens
Eran las dos de la tarde. El sol resplandecía vivo, centelleante, sobre el mar. La brisa apenas tenía fuerza para hinchar las velas de las lanchas pescadoras que surcaban el océano a la ventura. Los picos salientes de la costa y las montañas de tierra adentro se veían a lo lejos envueltas en un finísimo cendal azulado. Los pueblecillos costaneros brillaban como puntos blancos en el fondo de las ensenadas. Reinaba silencio, el silencio solemne, infinito, de la mar en calma.
Reading José in Passage
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 beginner, so it's a good first whole book if you know the basics of Spanish and want something you can finish. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
