Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners

My name is Tom. I'm from Canada. Yesterday I went to Madrid by plane. The trip is long, but I'm happy. At the airport, I wait for my suitcase. I wait ten minutes. I wait twenty minutes. There's no suitcase.

I go to an office. A woman asks me: "What color is your suitcase?" "It's red and big," I say. "And it has a bear sticker." The woman types everything into the computer. "Tomorrow, sir," she says.

I have no clothes. I don't have my toothbrush. I buy a T-shirt in an airport shop. It's yellow and says "Madrid." At night, I ate a potato omelette in a small bar. It's delicious.

Today, at nine, someone knocks on the hotel door. It's my red suitcase with the bear! I'm very happy. But now I also have a yellow T-shirt.

Lucía has a cat. His name is Bigotes (Whiskers). Bigotes is fat, orange and very clever. He likes to sleep on the table, near Lucía's phone.

One night, Lucía is in the shower. Bigotes walks on the phone. He steps on an app. He steps on a big button. He steps on another button. Then he falls asleep again.

Thirty minutes later, someone rings the doorbell. Lucía opens the door. There's a young man with a huge box. "A family-size pizza with tuna and extra cheese," he says. "It's already paid for."

Lucía doesn't understand anything. She looks at her phone. She sees the order: tuna pizza, at 9:10. She looks at Bigotes. Bigotes opens one eye.

Yesterday I saw Lucía in the park and she told me the story. "I ate pizza for three days," she says. "And Bigotes ate all the tuna." Now Lucía has a new rule: the phone is never on the table.

My grandma's name is Carmen. She lives in a small village in the south of Spain. She makes the best soup in the world. Everyone in the family says so.

Last Sunday I went to her house. I ate two bowls of soup. "Grandma, what's the secret?" I ask her. She smiles. "It's a secret," she says.

In the afternoon, I look in the kitchen. I see tomatoes, garlic, onion, olive oil and bread. Nothing special. I look for a recipe book. There's no book.

Before dinner, I saw something strange. My grandma puts a small green leaf in the soup. Then she sings an old song, very quietly, and stirs the soup three times.

"What's the leaf, Grandma?" "It's bay leaf," she says. "And the song?" She laughs. "The song isn't for the soup. It's for me. Cooking with joy: that's the secret."

Last Saturday, Marta had her first date with Javier. They met in a dance class, but they had never talked alone. They agreed to meet at eight in front of Sevilla Cathedral.

Marta arrived at five to eight. She waited until eight, quarter past eight, half past eight. Javier didn't arrive. She sent him a message, but he didn't answer. Sad, she decided to go home.

Then she saw a man running across the square with a bunch of flowers. It was Javier, sweaty and out of breath. "I'm so sorry!" he said. "I went to the wrong cathedral… well, the wrong church. And my phone died."

Marta laughed so much she couldn't get angry. They had tapas in a small bar in the Triana neighborhood and then walked along the river until midnight.

Now, every time they meet, Javier sends her a photo of the exact spot. "Just in case," he says.

On Tuesday morning, my phone rang. It was a number I didn't know. "Pedro? Finally! I called you five times," said an older lady. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm not Pedro," I answered.

But she didn't listen to me. She started talking about her dog, her noisy neighbor and a chocolate cake she made for Pedro's birthday. She talked so fast that I couldn't interrupt her.

After ten minutes, she finally asked me: "Are you coming on Sunday?" I explained again that I wasn't Pedro. There was a long silence. "Oh, excuse me," she said. "It's just that Pedro is my grandson and he never answers."

I felt sorry for her. I asked her name. Her name was Dolores and she lived alone. We talked a little longer about her dog, whose name was Chispa (Spark).

That afternoon, Dolores called me again. "It's not a mistake," she said. "I just wanted to know how you are." Since then, we talk every Tuesday.

On my first trip to Mexico City, my friend Sofía took me to a night market. We arrived at nine at night and the street was full of lights, music and the smell of corn.

First I tried a corn on the cob with lime, cheese and chili. It was very spicy, but it was delicious. Then we bought tacos al pastor at a small stall. The man cut the meat in front of us, with a piece of pineapple on top.

Then we saw a man who was selling wrestling masks. Sofía tried on a blue and silver one and started doing wrestler poses. Everyone laughed, and the seller gave us a discount.

At midnight, tired and happy, we had hot chocolate with churros. "Did you like it?" Sofía asked me. I told her yes, that it was the best night of the trip.

I still have the mask in my room. Every time I see it, I remember the taste of the corn.

Elena had been working in the village for three weeks when she heard the story for the first time. According to the locals, the old lighthouse had been dark for twenty years, but on some stormy nights a light could be seen at the top.

Elena was a journalist and didn't believe in ghosts. One October night, while it was raining hard, she took a flashlight and climbed the stone path. The wind was blowing so hard that she could barely move forward.

When she arrived, the door was open. She climbed the hundred and twelve steps, counting each one quietly. At the top, by the window, there was an older man with an oil lamp.

His name was Andrés and he had been the last lighthouse keeper. He explained that, when there's a storm, young fishermen sometimes get lost. "The lighthouse doesn't work anymore," he said, "but this lamp still shows them where the rocks are."

Elena didn't write the article she had planned. She wrote a different one, about a man who never stopped looking after the sea.

All season long, my neighborhood team had lost almost every game. We were eleven friends who played on Thursday nights, more for fun than to win. That's why nobody understood how we had made it to the final of the local tournament.

On the day of the match, it was terribly hot. The stands were full of families, neighbors and even the baker, who had closed the shop to watch us. In the first half, the other team scored two goals. We were exhausted.

At half-time, our goalkeeper, Raúl, who almost never spoke, stood up. "We don't have to win," he said. "We just have to play like we do on Thursdays." We all looked at each other and started laughing.

In the second half we played without fear. We scored a goal, then another, and in the last minute my little sister headed in the third.

There was no real trophy, just a plastic cup. But that night, in the square, we lifted it as if it were gold.