Valencia paella: Spanish reading (A1)
Andrés wants the prawn paella from a photo. At Nuria's house in Valencia, lunch is after two, and the paella has chicken, rabbit, and green beans.
La paella de Valencia
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About this article
What you'll learn
Present tense, the question ¿Y las gambas?, and table words: paella, aceite de oliva, pollo, conejo, and judías verdes.
Andrés eats at Nuria's house in Valencia after two o'clock. He wants the prawn and mussel paella from a photo. There is bread with olive oil, and Spain produces more olive oil than any other country. The household paella has rice, chicken, rabbit, and green beans, and no seafood. Nuria says that is traditional Valencian paella. Andrés tastes it, turns his phone face down, and keeps eating.
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.
La comida española es colorida, sabrosa y muy variada
newSpanish food is colourful, tasty and very varied
Three adjectives after es, all feminine to match comida: colorida, sabrosa, variada. Muy strengthens the last one.
A ready-made way to describe any cuisine, and a clear example of adjectives matching a feminine noun.
Los españoles desayunan ligero
newSpaniards have a light breakfast
Desayunar is a verb on its own, so Spanish needs no word for have: desayuno, desayunas, desayuna. Ligero here works as an adverb, without the usual -mente.
Spanish turns three of the meals into verbs: desayunar, comer, cenar. English needs two words for each.
La comida del mediodía es la más importante
newthe most important meal
The superlative is article + más + adjective: la más importante, el más español. The article agrees with the noun.
Two small words, el más or la más, give you every superlative in the language.
Las familias comen juntas
newfamilies eat together
Juntas is an adjective here, not an adverb, so it agrees: las familias comen juntas, los niños comen juntos.
English together never changes; Spanish juntos does, and getting it wrong is a common mistake.
Las tapas son pequeñas porciones de comida variada
newtapas are small portions of assorted food
Una tapa is a small plate that comes with a drink. There is a popular story that a small plate once covered the glass, but nobody knows whether it is true.
Tapas are not a dish but a way of eating: several small plates shared among everyone.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
El desayuno
desayuno
breakfast
El desayuno is the first meal, and desayunar is its verb. Break the word apart and you see it: des + ayuno, undoing the fast, exactly like breakfast.
Noun and verb come as a pair, so one word gives you two.
La comida
comida
food, and also lunch
La comida means food in general, but in Spain it also means the midday meal. La comida es a las dos means lunch is at two, not food is at two.
One of the words a learner misreads most often, because the second meaning is invisible from the first.
La cena
cena
dinner, supper
La cena is the evening meal and cenar is its verb. In Spain it starts at nine or ten at night, far later than in most of Europe.
If you book a table in Spain for seven, the kitchen may not even be open.
El gazpacho
gazpacho
gazpacho, cold tomato soup
A cold soup of tomato and olive oil from Andalusia, in the south of Spain, where summers are very hot. It is drunk cold, often from a glass.
Knowing where a dish comes from is what turns a menu word into something you can talk about.
La paella
paella
paella
A rice dish from Valencia, on the east coast. The original valenciana has no seafood at all: chicken, rabbit and green beans. The seafood version is a later variant.
Almost everyone abroad believes paella means rice with seafood, and in Valencia that is not what it means.
La tortilla
tortilla
tortilla: Spanish potato omelette
In Spain a tortilla is a thick omelette of egg, potato and olive oil. In Mexico a tortilla is a flat maize bread. Same word, two unrelated foods.
This is the food word most likely to leave you holding something you did not order.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
El or la: every noun has a gender
El gazpacho es una sopa fría de tomate
gazpacho is a cold tomato soup
Every Spanish noun is masculine or feminine, and the article shows which: el gazpacho, el desayuno, la paella, la comida. Nouns ending in -o are usually el, those in -a usually la, and the exceptions have to be learned one by one.
Get the article wrong and every adjective after it goes wrong too, so this is the first thing to fix.
Beber, comer: the -er verbs
Los niños beben agua o zumo natural
children drink water or fresh juice
Regular -er verbs in the present: bebo, bebes, bebe, bebemos, bebéis, beben. Comer follows the same pattern. Careful with tomar and desayunar, which look similar here but are -ar verbs: toman, desayunan.
Two of the three Spanish verb groups differ only in these endings, so one table covers every -er verb you meet.
Adjectives agree twice: gender and number
Las ensaladas frescas son comunes en verano
fresh salads are common in summer
An adjective copies both the gender and the number of its noun: las ensaladas frescas (feminine plural), el pescado fresco (masculine singular). Adjectives ending in -e change only for number: comida variada but postre grande, postres grandes.
This is why Spanish adjectives look different every time you meet the same word.
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