Learn Spanish with short stories

Stories to read in Spanish, with the English beside each paragraph. They open in the browser, with no account needed, and each free one is also a free Spanish–English ebook for Kindle, Kobo or any e-reader: downloading needs a free account, no payment (which file to pick).

Open the Spanish–English library, where you can search the stories and filter them by level.

Want to hear it too? Spanish stories with audio are narrated, free, with a speed control.

By level:

• Beginner (A1–A2): Easy Spanish short stories for beginners, with English translation · 173 stories
• Intermediate (B1–B2): Intermediate Spanish short stories, side by side with English · 192 stories
• Advanced (C1–C2): Advanced Spanish stories, with the English alongside · 33 stories

Every story here carries its level on the Common European Framework, from A1 for beginners to C1 and beyond, so the library works as a set of Spanish graded readers, most of them free: start at the level where you understand most of a page, and move up when the English beside it is something you check only now and then.

Spanish is one of the most rewarding languages to read early. Spelling follows pronunciation, and a large share of its vocabulary shares Latin roots with English, so many words are recognisable on the page long before you would catch them in speech.

What slows readers down is the grammar around those words: the subjunctive, object pronouns attached to verbs, and the two past tenses that novels switch between constantly. With the English next to each paragraph, you can see how a sentence was meant without stopping to look anything up.

For Spanish speakers, a parallel text is a way into books in English without reaching for a dictionary every few lines. Read the English and look across to the Spanish when an idiom or a long sentence doesn’t land.

It works for bilingual families too: one book, two languages on the same page, so a parent and a child can each follow in the language they read best.

398 English stories in the library have Spanish alongside: Aprender inglés con cuentos cortos.

Long out of copyright and easy to find as EPUBs. Any of them makes a good first Spanish–English parallel text:

• Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes
• Marianela, Benito Pérez Galdós
• Rimas y leyendas, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
• Niebla, Miguel de Unamuno

Or use a book you already own: the method works best with something you actually want to read. See how to read a parallel text to get the most from it.