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A village novel of gossip and love, for B2

Juanita la Larga Juanita la Larga

Juan Valera, 1982

Juan Valera’s complete novel of 1895 from the Salvat edition, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 71,600 words and 26 words per sentence on average. In an Andalusian village, don Paco, the ageing secretary of the town council, falls in love with young Juanita while the whole place talks. The first eleven chapters are the hardest, the rest is easier.

  • B2
  • 71 575 words
  • 12-20 hours
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Will this text hold?

B1

Earlier

At B1 the first eleven chapters will be slow going: sentences of about 34 words, with the main verb held back behind asides, and village, legal and political vocabulary such as cacique, ayuntamiento or rábula.

B1

B2

This text

You can manage it at B2: take the first chapters slowly, translating single words and whole sentences, and from chapter XII on the sentences shorten to about 25 words and the dialogue and the plot carry you along.

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C1

With room to spare

At C1 the novel reads freely; only the longest periods of the opening chapters and the ironic asides about village politics slow you down.

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The average sentence has 26 words, more than Pepita Jiménez (22) or Marianela (15) and about the same as Sotileza and Martín Fierro (25 each), though long sentences alone do not decide the level. One word in eleven has 9 letters or more (9.2%), against 8.2% in Pepita Jiménez and just short of the one in ten (9.9%) where the catalog starts C1. The difficulty is uneven: chapters I-XI average about 34 words per sentence, with about 10% long words, while from chapter XII on the average is about 25 words and 9.0%, and chapters XLI-XLIII drop to about 17. Long periods, village and legal vocabulary and Valera’s irony add work, but the story itself is plain. Hence B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.

71 575
words
26
words in an average sentence
12-20
hours of reading
1982
Salvat Editores

Salvat Editores, 1982. Project Gutenberg

What it is about, without the ending

In Villalegre, a small and prosperous town in Andalusia, nothing is settled without don Paco, the secretary of the town council, who at fifty-three is well preserved, knows more law than the lawyers and advises everyone. Then he notices Juanita, the lively seventeen-year-old daughter of Juana la Larga, a hard-working woman of modest family, and he falls in love. Village gossip, the cacique’s politics and the young Antoñuelo, the blacksmith’s son, who watches Juanita with admiration, make the courtship far from simple, and Valera tells it with plenty of irony, through the memories of a friend who was a new deputy for the district. How far don Paco gets, and what Juanita decides, is not revealed here.

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Juanita la Larga

Capítulo V

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Capítulo XVIII

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Project Gutenberg

Three motives before the main verb

Valera lists why Juanita goes to the fountain with a chain of alternatives: “ora fuese por candorosa coquetería, o sea por deseo de lucir la gallardía de su persona, ora porque Juanita necesitase del ejercicio corporal”. Ora... ora means “whether... or”, and fuese and necesitase are the older -se subjunctives, the same as fuera and necesitara. Skip the motives on a first pass and look for the main verb, held back until the end: gustaba de ir, “she liked to go”.

Questions that guess

Don Paco turns the matter over in questions, and the conditional does the guessing: “¿sería esto cálculo o ladino instinto de mujer?” means “could this be calculation or a woman’s sly instinct?”, not “would it be”. Spanish uses the conditional for a conjecture about the past, and the same mood runs through the next lines. Notice too “si no le había dado calabazas, era porque...”: the pluperfect looks back from the moment of thinking, so read it as “if she had not turned him down, it was because...”.

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Where the text gets harder

Translation while you read

The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.

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The book opens with a sentence that already runs long, and translating the whole sentence in Reader helps here: “Cierto amigo mío, diputado novel, cuyo nombre no pongo aquí porque no viene al caso, estaba entusiasmadísimo con su distrito”.

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If this book is not the one

Spanish books B1 Earlier Pepita Jiménez Another book by the same author B2
All books at this level

Before you read

Is this the original or a learner adaptation?

It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Juan Valera’s complete novel of 1895, 45 chapters and an epilogue, 46 sections in all. The reader follows the text of the Salvat Editores edition, printed as a complete edition, as Project Gutenberg gives it; the modern prologue that opens that edition is left out. The cover shown is from a different edition, Biblioteca Nueva, 1929.

Is there an audiobook?

Juanita la Larga has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novel is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for words from village life and the law such as ejido, albercón or rábula.

Can I translate a whole sentence?

Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the opening chapters, where sentences often pass 30 words, starting with the book’s first sentence: “Cierto amigo mío, diputado novel, cuyo nombre no pongo aquí porque no viene al caso, estaba entusiasmadísimo con su distrito”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.

How many hours does it take?

The whole novel takes about 12-20 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Chapters vary from about 700 words (chapter V) to about 2,600 (chapter XVIII), and the epilogue has about 2,400, so most chapters make a short evening of reading.

Where does the text get easier?

Yes, after chapter XI. Chapters I-XI average about 34 words per sentence, with the long periods that set the scene of Villalegre and its politics. From chapter XII the average falls to about 25, chapters XLI-XLIII run at about 17, and only the epilogue goes back up, to about 29.

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 you can come back to the novel every evening where you left off. Any of the 46 chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example chapter V, with Juanita at the fountain, or the epilogue.

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