Spanish GCSE Reading and Grammar-Constance e Imran Episode 30 (learn through a novel)
- The story episode in Spanish.
- The translation into English.
- A grammar explanation with examples from the story.
Hace sol en Brighton, pero el aire sigue frío. Constance camina por una calle estrecha, lejos de Maya, Daniel e Imran. Por primera vez en muchos días, no está siguiendo a nadie. Le gustan esos momentos de soledad, en los que el silencio la rodea y sus ideas se ponen en orden como las piezas de un rompecabezas. Hace mucho que la gente le pone etiquetas: la chica que lee, la chica rara, la chica brillante, la chica sola. Pero nadie la conoce realmente. Y ella misma, ahora, está construyendo su propia identidad, como hacen sus amigos, como hace todo adolescente.
It is sunny in Brighton, but the air is still cold. Constance walks down a narrow street, far away from Maya, Daniel and Imran. For the first time in many days, she is not following anyone. She likes those moments of solitude, when silence surrounds her and her thoughts fall into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. People have been putting labels on her for a long time: the girl who reads, the strange girl, the clever girl, the lonely girl. But nobody really knows her. And now she is building her own identity, just as her friends do, just as every teenager does.
En una cafetería, una mujer está leyendo una novela junto a la ventana. Constance se queda mirándola. Hace años que los libros son su refugio, una forma de paliar la soledad. Desde que era una niña, fueron su compañía. No tuvo hermanos y su madre era una figura ausente. Su padre simplemente se había evaporado. Así que tuvo que encontrar con qué llenar ese vacío. Poco a poco, los libros se convirtieron en una parte de sí misma, y estaba empezando a descubrir que tal vez quería ser escritora. Tenía miedo de todo: de no ser lo suficientemente buena, de no interesar a nadie, de no ganar dinero para vivir de su trabajo. Sabía que sería difícil. Pero, como decía su querida J.K. Rowling: “es imposible vivir sin fracasar en algo, salvo que vivas con tanto miedo a equivocarte que apenas llegues a vivir”.
In a café, a woman is reading a novel by the window. Constance watches her. For years, books have been her refuge, a way of easing her loneliness. Ever since she was a child, they have been her companions. She had no siblings, and her mother was an absent figure. Her father had simply vanished. So she had to find something to fill that emptiness. Little by little, books became part of who she was, and she was beginning to discover that perhaps she wanted to be a writer. She was afraid of everything: of not being good enough, of not being interesting to anyone, of not earning enough money to live from her work. She knew it would be difficult. But, as her beloved J.K. Rowling used to say: “It is impossible to live without failing at something — unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.”
Su móvil vibró. Era un mensaje del grupo. Daniel había escrito: «Mañana voy a decirle a Collins exactamente lo que pienso». Imran respondió casi de inmediato: «Perfecto. Yo también».
Her phone vibrated. It was a message from the group chat. Daniel had written: “Tomorrow I’m going to tell Collins exactly what I think.” Imran replied almost immediately: “Perfect. Me too.”
Suspiró. La clase de historia del día siguiente iba a ser cualquier cosa menos aburrida.
She sighed. The next day’s history class was going to be anything but boring.
I will introduce today a new concept: personal and impersonal verbs. A verb is personal when someone or somebody does something -they perform the action expressed by the verb-, as in:
Yo paso frente a tu casa. I pass in front of your house.
El tren pasa frente a tu casa. The train passes in front of your house.
As you see here, the subject of the sentence could be anything, not only a person. However, we use the label “personal verbs”, because a person can perform the action.
But there are also impersonal verbs. Take a look:
Llueve.
Hace frío.
Es tarde.
Hay un problema.
You have a verb here (llover, hacer, ser, haber), but nobody is doing anything, there is no action involved. By the way, if you have heard that a verb is a “doing word” — something my students often say — forget it, because there are many verbs which do not express any action. If you need the real definition of verb (the one that any real linguist will give you), here it is:
🟪 A Verb is a kind of word that can express grammatical person (yo, tú, él…), grammatical number (singular or plural), mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, conditional), time (past, present, future) and voice (active or passive) changing the endings. That is the essential definition.
Now, going back to our episode, take the verb “hacer”. It is a special verb, because it works like personal or impersonal. As a personal verb, we can say “yo hago, tú haces, él hace”… In the episode you have an example:
Como hacen sus amigos: Just as her friends do.
But this verb could be also impersonal, and you also have examples in the episode:
Hace sol: It is sunny.
Hace años que los libros son su refugio: For years, books have been her refuge.
I wrote another blog which complements this one, explaining everything about this:
https://spanishforlondon.com/2025/02/13/53-the-spanish-verb-hacer/
I explained the regular patter of this tense here:
Let’s see now the irregular forms. We have three cases:
🟨 Two verbs changing O for U:
Dormir, durmiendo: Está durmiendo en el sofá. He/she is sleeping on the sofa.
Morir, muriendo: El gato se está muriendo. The cat is dying.
🟩 A relatively big group of verbs changing E for I: these verbs end with IR, and in the Simple Present, they change the E for IE or for I. Look at the examples:
Mentir (to lie): yo miento, yo estoy mintiendo
Pedir (to request, to order): yo pido, yo estoy pidiendo
Seguir (to follow, to continue): yo sigo, yo estoy siguiendo
🟦 Verbs where we replace I for Y, to avoid having three vowels in a row:
Leer (to read): estoy leyendo (and not leiendo)
Traer (to bring): estoy trayendo (and not traiendo)
You have three examples in our episode:
No está siguiendo a nadie. Seguir, green group.
Está construyendo su propia identidad. Construir, blue group.
Una mujer está leyendo una novela junto a la ventana. Leer, blue group.
Find all the episodes here: https://spanishforlondon.com/2025/08/29/contents-gcse-spanish/
Highly qualified native teacher with 30 years of experience. One-to-one lessons via Zoom. Contact me at laura@spanishforlondon.com
We post one new blog every week — keep up with Constance and Imran’s story!
