Spanish · Intermediate
Read La corte de Carlos IV in Spanishwith every sentence explained
English title: The Court of Charles IV
Benito Pérez Galdós · 1873
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About the book
La corte de Carlos IV by Benito Pérez Galdós was first published in 1873. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction and young adult. It runs to about 69,500 words.
A quick-witted servant, a theatre full of rivals, and a royal court full of plots.
After surviving the Battle of Trafalgar, young Gabriel Araceli has landed in Madrid in 1807 as the servant of Pepita González, a well-known actress. Life backstage is a whirl of jealous performers, rowdy audiences and the great tragedian Isidoro Máiquez preparing Othello. But Gabriel's sharp wits catch the eye of glamorous ladies of the court, and before long he is drawn into the intrigues swirling around King Charles IV, the hated royal favourite Godoy and the scheming Prince Fernando.
Torn between ambition and his love for sweet, modest Inés, Gabriel must learn whom to trust in a world where everyone is spying on everyone.
The second of Benito Pérez Galdós's Episodios Nacionales, The Court of Charles IV is a lively, witty window onto Spain on the eve of Napoleon's invasion.
- Author
- Benito Pérez Galdós
- First published
- 1873
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Young Adult
- Length
- About 69,500 words
How it opens
Sin oficio ni beneficio, sin parientes ni habientes, vagaba por Madrid un servidor de ustedes, maldiciendo la hora menguada en que dejó su ciudad natal por esta inhospitalaria Corte, cuando acudió a las páginas del Diario para buscar ocupación honrosa. La imprenta fue mano de santo para la desnudez, hambre, soledad y abatimiento del pobre Gabriel, pues a los tres días de haber entregado a la publicidad en letras de molde las altas cualidades con que se creía favorecido por la Naturaleza, le tomó a su servicio una cómica del teatro del Príncipe, llamada Pepita González o la González.
Reading La corte de Carlos IV 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 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.
