II. Las mozas del arroyo
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A B1 retelling of Lope de Vega’s play
Fuenteovejuna Fuenteovejuna
Lope de Vega
This is a MovaReader retelling of Lope de Vega’s play in Spanish prose, not the original verse and not a translation of the full text: it is written for B1 readers who want a long story with all the tenses they are learning. In the catalog it is B1: about 12,300 words, 12 words per sentence on average, in 14 chapters. It keeps the main line of the play printed in 1619, and the answer every Spanish reader knows, «Fuenteovejuna lo hizo». Everything is told as a story, and about half of the text is dialogue.
- B1
- 12 264 words
- 2-3 hours
Will this text hold?
A2
Earlier
At A2 you will follow the story, but the grammar will stop you: ojalá with the imperfect subjunctive, the conditional and the pluperfect (qué habría pasado si Frondoso no hubiera estado allí), imperatives such as Sentaos, and the vos forms of a village speaking to its lord, in sentences of 12 words instead of the 9-10 of the A2 shelf.
A2B1
This text
Right for B1: all the tenses you are learning, in sentences of 12 words with everyday country vocabulary, and 14 chapters of 700 to 1,050 words that read one at a time, with about half of the text in dialogue.
Check this passageB2
With room to spare
At B2 this retelling is easy reading for a few evenings. The complete Spanish texts on the B2 shelf come next, such as Unamuno’s Mist, with 13 words per sentence and one long word in fourteen.
Start readingThe average sentence has 12 words, like the other B1 retellings: Pride and Prejudice has 12, while the Spanish A2 adaptations have 9-10 and Mist, the first complete text at B2, has 13. Vocabulary keeps it below B2: a word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 22 words (4.5%), against once in 14 in Mist (6.9%). What lifts it above A2 is grammar and register: ojalá with the imperfect subjunctive (¡Ojalá no volviera nunca!), si-clauses with the pluperfect (qué habría pasado si Frondoso no hubiera estado allí), imperatives for vosotros (Sentaos) and the old forms of address, vos and vuestra señoría, with which the commander and the village mayor speak to each other. About half of the text is dialogue in «», so the grammar arrives in spoken sentences. The difficulty is fairly even: the chapters run from 10 to 14 words per sentence, from 14 in the first chapter to 10 in chapter VII. Hence B1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 12 264
- words
- 12
- words in an average sentence
- 2-3
- hours of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Castile, in the time of the Catholic Monarchs. Fernán Gómez, commander of the Order of Calatrava, treats the village of Fuenteovejuna as his own property and the girls who live in it as his prey. When the master of the order calls him to war, he comes back a winner and more arrogant than ever. Laurencia, the proud daughter of the mayor Esteban, refuses his gifts and his servants, until the day the commander meets her alone by the stream and Frondoso, the young villager who loves her, steps in with a crossbow. From then on the commander has a name to hate, Mengo pays for trying to help a neighbour, and Jacinta runs along the road with the commander’s men behind her. Far away the kings follow the news of the war, and in the village the neighbours begin to talk in the square. What the people of Fuenteovejuna finally do, and what the kings decide, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Fuenteovejuna
VI. Palabras en la plaza
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«¿ ? ¿ ?».
Choose an underlined word.
Ojalá and the imperfect subjunctive
When Laurencia says ¡Ojalá no volviera nunca!, ojalá with the imperfect subjunctive (volviera, tuviera) is a wish that she knows will probably not come true: “I wish he never came back”. Read volviera and tuviera as part of the wish, not as an ordinary past tense.
Vos and vuestra señoría
The commander and the mayor do not say tú: they say vos, vuestra señoría and me ayudarais. These are old polite forms of address, so vos la persigáis simply means “you chase her”, with persigáis the vosotros form of perseguir in the subjunctive. Translate them like usted and look for the meaning in the joke about the hare.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
Reader translates whole sentences, and here that helps most where a speaker turns a joke around, as in chapter VI, when the mayor answers the commander’s talk of a hare he cannot catch: ¿Mi hija? ¿Y es mi hija una liebre para que vos la persigáis?, which shows that he has understood exactly what the commander wants.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
A learner adaptation, not the original and not the play itself: MovaReader retold in Spanish prose Lope de Vega’s verse play Fuenteovejuna, a drama in three acts printed in 1619 in the Docena parte of his plays. The language and form have changed: modern Spanish prose with all the tenses, 12 words per sentence on average, 14 chapters and about 12,300 words, instead of verse in acts and scenes. The main line of the play remains, and some of its best-known lines survive in the dialogue, such as «¿Quién mató al comendador?» and «Fuenteovejuna, señor». Long speeches are condensed into scenes. The play itself is on Wikisource, which is the source named for this retelling.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audio version of this adaptation: MovaReader gives you the text, not a recording. The text is read on screen, and when you tap an unfamiliar word its translation appears next to it; here that will often be the vocabulary of the village and of a lord’s power, such as comendador, labrador or ballesta.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
The Reader plan translates whole sentences. Here they average 12 words, and you will want one translated mostly where an old form of address or a joke is hidden, as in the mayor’s answer to the commander: ¿Mi hija? ¿Y es mi hija una liebre para que vos la persigáis?, or in a speech full of ojalá and the imperfect subjunctive. The free plan also translates single words, up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole adaptation takes 2-3 hours at the pace of someone who still translates new words. A chapter averages about 880 words, or 9-15 minutes of reading (the shortest has about 710 words, the longest about 1,050), so one evening covers three or four chapters.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is fairly even: the 14 chapters have 10-14 words per sentence. The first chapter is the densest, with 14 words per sentence, and chapters VI to XI are the lightest, with 10-12, because short spoken lines carry the scene. Long words vary a little more: about one in 33 in chapter XIV, one in 18 in chapter XII.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes, once you sign in: the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so next time you carry on from there. The contents on this page also take you straight to any chapter, say VI, “Palabras en la plaza”, where the commander speaks to the mayor in front of the whole village.