I. El monte de las ánimas
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An A2 adaptation of five Spanish legends
Legends of Bécquer Leyendas de Bécquer
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
This is a MovaReader retelling in simple Spanish of five legends by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, not the original text: an adaptation for readers who already know the past tenses and enjoy a dark, atmospheric story. In the catalog it is A2: about 5,500 words, 10 words per sentence on average. Nine short chapters lead from a haunted hill near Soria and a spirit with green eyes in a mountain spring to a moonlit chase, a blind organist in Seville and a ruined abbey on Holy Thursday.
- A2
- 5 486 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
A1
Earlier
At A1 the past tenses will stop you: the narration runs in the pretérito indefinido and imperfecto (llegó, dijo, vivía, tenía), at 10 words per sentence on average against 5-7 at A1.
A1A2
This text
You can manage it at A2: the sentences are short, each legend has a simple plot, and the story keeps to the past tenses you know, with plenty of dialogue to carry you along.
Check this passageB1
With room to spare
At B1 these legends read with room to spare: the whole book takes 1-2 hours. The next step is the complete Legends by Bécquer, already in the catalog at B2: almost nine times longer, with 32 words per sentence.
Start readingThe average sentence has 10 words, the same as the catalog’s other A2 books (9-10 words), while A1 retellings stay at 5-7 and B1 ones rise to 11-12. The narration is in the past, in the pretérito indefinido and imperfecto, and more than a third of the words are lines of dialogue in quotation marks, so the sentences are short and the speakers change often. A word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 35 words (2.8%), and the most frequent ones, organista and templarios, are explained by the story itself. The difficulty is fairly even: the nine chapters have 8-11 words per sentence, and long words are rarest in chapter III (1.1%) and most frequent in chapter VI (3.7%). The complete Legends in the catalog are B2, at 32 words per sentence and almost nine times longer. Hence A2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 5 486
- words
- 10
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
MovaReader. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Five old Spanish legends, retold one after another. On the night of the dead, a young hunter in Soria rides to a hill where the dead are said to rise, all for a blue ribbon that his proud cousin says she has lost. A young nobleman follows a wounded deer into the Moncayo mountains and finds a spring where a spirit with green eyes looks at him from the water. A dreamer searches the ruins of an old convent for a woman in white whom he saw only once, by moonlight. In Seville, the blind organist Maese Pérez plays his old organ on Christmas night as he has never played it, and the organ keeps its secret for years. And a travelling musician walks through a storm to a ruined abbey on Holy Thursday, to hear the psalm he has been looking for all his life. How each legend ends is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Leyendas de Bécquer
VII. Maese Pérez, el organista
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Choose an underlined word.
A story inside a story
Alonso tells an old story inside the story, so both paragraphs are in quotation marks and the verbs sometimes step back in time. Notice habían ganado (they had won): haber plus the -ado or -ido form names something that happened before the rest. Everything else uses the tenses you know: era, guardaban, fue.
Describing sound with como
The writer paints the music with comparisons: como una voz que sube, como la niebla sobre el mar, como un hilo de luz. When you see como followed by a noun, it tells you what the sound is like. The sentences are long because they are joined with y and commas, so read them in short pieces.
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 with the sayings the characters use, like the old hunter’s: Más allá, que pase el cura con su agua bendita.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
A learner adaptation, not the original: MovaReader retold five legends by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer in simple Spanish, following the Project Gutenberg edition of his Leyendas. Bécquer wrote them between 1858 and 1864 and died in 1870. The language and length have changed: modern Spanish in the past tenses, 10 words per sentence on average, 9 chapters and about 5,500 words, while the complete Legends in the catalog are almost nine times longer. The plots and endings stay: El monte de las ánimas, Los ojos verdes, El rayo de luna, Maese Pérez el organista and El Miserere. The other legends of the collection and the author’s short prefaces are left out. When you are ready, you can move up to the complete Legends, which are in the catalog at level B2.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audio version of this adaptation: MovaReader gives you the text, not a recording. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears next to it; here that will mostly be words from the old hunt, the church and the castle, such as montero, ballesta or tribuna.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
The Reader plan translates whole sentences. Here they are short, 10 words on average, so you will seldom need one translated: mostly the sayings and the poetic turns, like Más allá, que pase el cura con su agua bendita and El amor es un rayo de luna. The free plan also translates single words, up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole adaptation takes 1-2 hours at the pace of someone who still translates new words. A chapter averages about 610 words, or 6-10 minutes of reading, so one evening easily covers several chapters, and each legend is short enough to read on its own.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is fairly even: the nine chapters average 8-11 words per sentence. The easiest is chapter III, the start of the green-eyed story, with 8 words per sentence and the fewest long words (1.1%). The longest sentences are in chapters VII and IX, 11 words each, and the most long words are in chapter VI (3.7%).
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 VII, “Maese Pérez, el organista”, where the story of the organ begins.