LingoflyTexts in Spanish
Short texts in Spanish with a translation alongside and comprehension questions, levels A1–B1. The first ones need two or three hundred everyday words; the B1 texts need about three thousand. The translation stands next to it whole, not word by word: stopping at every other word tears the sentence apart.
All texts
- 📖An ordinary dayA1 · Good morning. My name is Marta and I live in Valencia. In the morning I drink coffee and…
- 📖At the marketA2 · On Saturday I go to the market with my family. It is close to home, ten minutes on foot.…
- 📖The Saturday shoppingA2 · On Saturdays I go to the supermarket with a small basket. I always look at the price tag…
- 📖The new apartmentA2 · My apartment is on the third floor, and the elevator has not worked since January. The…
- 📖A bad weekA2 · On Monday I got up with a fever and a sore throat. I went to the pharmacy and bought…
- 📖August in the northA2 · In July Madrid is an oven: it is hot both day and night. That is why in August we go to…
- 📖Papers and the officeA2 · My first day at the office was in January. The boss explained the schedule to me and gave…
- 📖A layover in BarcelonaA2 · My flight to Rome had a layover in Barcelona of only fifty minutes. At check-in they told…
- 📖The island oppositeA2 · From the beach you can see a small island with two palm trees and a cave. On Sunday we…
- 📖Two T-shirts and a sweaterA2 · I went to buy clothes for the trip and left the store with less than I planned. The green…
- 📖Making peace with the neighborA2 · The neighbor on the fifth floor is an elderly woman, calm and very kind. Last month we…
- 📖Friday dinnerA2 · On Fridays I cook, and always the same thing: potatoes in the oven and fish in the frying…
- 📖Forty unread messagesA2 · On Sunday I left my phone at my sister's place and did not think about it until the…
- 📖The repair shop on the cornerA2 · The washing machine broke on Thursday, and the water reached the hallway. I called the…
- 📖A concert in the squareA2 · Every summer there is a free concert in the square by the town hall, and this year a…
- 📖Thursday's processionA2 · In my city Holy Week begins on Thursday, when the bells of all the churches ring. The…
- 📖The grandparents' courtyardA2 · My grandparents' house is small: two bedrooms, a kitchen and a courtyard with a blue…
- 📖This year's scheduleA2 · This year's class schedule is worse than last year's: we start at eight and finish at…
- 📖The household budgetA2 · Since January we have written down all our expenses in a notebook, and the very first…
- 📖Two nights in the hospitalA2 · My mother fell on the staircase in the entrance hall and was taken by ambulance to the…
- 📖Read the contract before signingA2 · My sister signed the work contract without reading it in full, and two months later a…
- 📖The furniture in the new apartmentA2 · The apartment we rented came furnished, but the furniture was left over from the…
- 📖Two hundred kilometers of curvesA2 · We rented a small car to go up to the mountain villages, and the road turned out to be…
- 📖A thousand followers and not one commentB1 · My sister opened a profile to sell her ceramics, and at first she posted one photo a day.…
- 📖A police report for the bicycleB1 · On Saturday morning my bicycle was stolen from the entrance hall, although it was locked…
- 📖I am not sure of anythingB1 · For three weeks I have been turning the same decision over in my head and I am still not…
- 📖The day everything broke downA2 · First, at seven in the morning, the power went out — just when I was making breakfast.…
- 📖The neighbor on the fifth floorA2 · The neighbor on the fifth floor is an elderly man, tall and gray-haired, with enormous…
- 📖Two months without speakingB1 · Marta and I had been friends for fifteen years, and for two months we did not speak over…
- 📖The Sunday mealA2 · On Sundays my father cooks, and always the same thing: rice with chicken and a salad of…
- 📖The January salesB1 · In January I went to the shopping center for boots and came back with two things I did…
- 📖The washing machine from the apartment aboveA2 · The washing machine first started making a strange noise during the spin cycle, and a…
- 📖My grandfather's vegetable gardenA2 · My grandfather had a small vegetable garden on the outskirts of the village, between a…
- 📖The uptown neighborhoodB1 · I live in a neighborhood on the outskirts, twenty minutes from the center by bus. It used…
- 📖Five months of SpanishB1 · I started learning Spanish on my own, with a dictionary and a pocket grammar, and after…
- 📖The village houseA2 · My grandmother was born in a village on the plain and spent her whole childhood and youth…
- 📖The art of saying noB1 · When I arrived in Spain I thought speaking directly was the most polite thing, and I…
- 📖My grandfather's workshopA2 · My grandfather was a carpenter all his life and never wanted to work in a factory. He…
- 📖The small printB1 · I signed the apartment contract without reading the last two pages, and it cost me eight…
- 📖The neighborhood that learned to recycleB1 · Ten years ago my neighborhood had a single container, and half of the garbage ended up on…
- 📖The Tuesday book clubB1 · In the bookshop on the corner there is a book club that meets on Tuesday evenings, and I…
- 📖The neighborhood raceA2 · Every year, on the first Sunday of October, there is a five-kilometer fun run in my…
- 📖The bridge the children measureA2 · In my village's school there is a custom that began twenty years ago: eleven-year-old…
- 📖The January fluA2 · In January the whole household caught it, except my grandmother — the only one who had…
- 📖The night of San JuanA2 · On the night of June twenty-third my whole village goes down to the beach and lights…
- 📖The tree in the courtyardB1 · In my building we have spent two years arguing about a tree in the courtyard, and the…
- 📖If I had knownB1 · Six years ago I was offered a position in another city, and within two days I turned it…
- 📖The box of broken thingsA2 · In my parents' house there is a cardboard box where everything that breaks and that…
- 📖The shortcut that was not a shortcutB1 · On the map the village was four kilometers away in a straight line and almost ten by the…
- 📖The building's accountsB1 · At this year's meeting the manager handed out a sheet with the building's expenses, and…
- 📖Starting from zero at fortyB1 · When the factory closed, my uncle was forty-two and had a trade that was needed nowhere…
- 📖Measuring the noiseB1 · For years the neighbors on my street said the noise from the terrace below was…
- 📖My grandmother's streetA2 · My grandmother lived seventy years on the same street and said she had seen three eras…
- 📖The river that came backB1 · For twenty years the river flowing through my city was almost an open sewer, and nobody…
- 📖The night shiftB1 · I came to the factory at nineteen, as a fill-in, to cover the summer vacations in the…
- 📖The night of the blackoutB1 · Here is what happened: it was Tuesday, we were having dinner, and suddenly the power went…
- 📖The neighbor on the third floorB1 · The neighbor on the third floor had a reputation as an unpleasant man, and for two years…
How to read a text in a language you barely know
First pass — all the way through, without peeking at the translation. The goal is not to understand but to catch familiar words: there will be more of them than you expect, and that feeling matters more than any rule.
Second pass — with the translation beside you. Now it becomes clear what exactly was in the way: an unknown word, a construction you did not get, or just reading speed.
Third pass — all the way through again. The second pass brings noticeably more, and this step is what makes reading useful: it turns analysis into recognition.
At the first levels a dictionary is still too early: stopping at every other word tears the sentence apart, and understanding never assembles. That is why the translation stands beside the text whole, not word by word — in the B1 texts too, although there it is for checking.
Frequently asked
What level do you need to read texts in Spanish?
A1–B1. For the first texts the letters and two or three hundred everyday words are enough; the B1 texts need about three thousand. The translation sits next to it, so an unknown word does not stop the reading.
How many times should you reread the text?
Three times: without the translation, with it, and without it again. The third pass is what all of this is for — the second time you recognize noticeably more.