Marta and the Giralda in Seville (A1)
In a Seville tourist office, Marta wants one visitor to leave knowing what the Giralda is and that the way up is by ramps. A short Spanish story for level A1.
Marta atiende a los clientes en Sevilla
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About this article
What you'll learn
Present tense, a polite counter question, and simple words for helping a visitor
Marta, at a tourist office in Seville, helps an older man who wants to see the Giralda. She says it is the cathedral tower, once a mosque minaret, now with bells above, and that inside there are wide ramps, not a narrow staircase. He writes the word down and does not ask for a price or a time. She says buenos días because lunch is still ahead.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
Buenos días
newGood morning, good day
In Spain buenos días runs until lunch, and lunch is at two or three in the afternoon. At one o'clock people still say buenos días; after lunch they switch to buenas tardes.
Foreign speakers switch at twelve and sound wrong for two hours every single day.
¿En qué puedo ayudarle?
newHow can I help you?
Puedo is I can, ayudar is to help, and the -le on the end is the pronoun for usted. Spanish glues the pronoun onto the end of an infinitive: ayudar + le = ayudarle.
It is the standard opening line behind any counter, and the glued-on pronoun is the part learners get wrong.
Entiendo su situación
newI understand your situation
Entiendo is the yo form of entender, an e to ie stem-changing verb: entiendo, entiendes, entiende, but entendemos. Su situación is your situation when you address the person as usted.
It buys you a moment and calms the customer before you offer anything concrete.
Lamento este inconveniente
newI am sorry about this problem
Lamento is more formal than lo siento: it is what a company says, not what a friend says. Inconveniente here means a problem or a nuisance, not the adjective inconvenient.
It apologises for the situation without blaming anyone, which is exactly what a service reply needs to do.
Voy a resolverlo ahora mismo
newI am going to sort it out right now
Voy a plus an infinitive is the everyday future in Spanish, far more common in speech than the -é future. The -lo means it, glued to the infinitive: resolver + lo.
Two hard points in one useful sentence: the near future and the attached object pronoun.
Que tenga un excelente día
newHave a great day
Tenga is the subjunctive of tener, not the ordinary tiene. Spanish wishes start with que plus the subjunctive: que tenga un buen día, que le vaya bien, que descanse.
You hear it every day at a counter, and for most learners it is their first subjunctive without them noticing.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
Atender: to serve, not to attend
atender
to serve, to see to (a customer)
Atender is a false friend. It does not mean to attend an event; it means to serve a customer or deal with a request. It is also stem-changing: atiendo, atiendes, atiende, but atendemos.
The whole job is named after it: atención al cliente.
The smile
la sonrisa
smile
La sonrisa is the smile; the verb is sonreír (sonrío, sonríes, sonríe), which keeps a written accent on the i.
It turns up in every service manual, and the accent on the i is easy to drop.
Patience: tener paciencia
la paciencia
patience
Patience goes with tener, not with ser: tener paciencia. Spanish uses tener where English uses to be, and the same pattern gives tener hambre, tener prisa, tener razón.
Tener plus a noun is one of the biggest gaps between Spanish and English, and this is a memorable example of it.
The counter
el mostrador
the counter
El mostrador is the long counter you stand at in a shop, a bank or an office. Nothing in the word resembles English, so it has to be learned outright.
You cannot describe a service job without it, and it is where every conversation in this text happens.
Enfadado: annoyed
enfadado
annoyed, angry
In Spain an upset customer is enfadado; in most of Latin America the same person is enojado. Both go with estar, not ser: está enfadado means angry right now, not an angry person.
Choosing estar over ser is the difference between a bad moment and a bad character.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
The we form: -amos, -emos, -imos
recibimos, decimos, preguntamos
we receive, we say, we ask
All three verbs are nosotros forms. Regular -ar verbs take -amos (preguntamos); -er and -ir verbs take -emos or -imos (recibimos). Decimos comes from decir, which is irregular elsewhere (digo, dices) but regular here.
Staff describe their own routine in the we form all day: recibimos, atendemos, cerramos.
Su: the usted possessive
su situación, su visita
your (usted)
Su is the possessive that belongs with usted, so su situación is your situation. With tú it would be tu situación, written without an accent. Su also means his, her and their, and only the context tells them apart.
Mixing up su and tu instantly changes how formal you sound to a customer.
Quién: asking who
¿Quién es el último?
Who is last?
Quién asks who, and it carries a written accent inside a question. Spanish queues often have no visible line: you arrive, ask who is last, and take your place after that person.
It is a question you genuinely need in any Spanish shop, and it shows the accent that question words take.
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