El faro (The lighthouse): free C1 Spanish story
Level C1 (Advanced) · Mystery · about 2 minutes
A lighthouse that was switched off decades ago starts shining again every Thursday.
In the app you can tap any word for its meaning, listen to natural narration with each word highlighted, and switch between Latin American and Spain Spanish. Read it in the app, free.
The story in Spanish
El faro de Punta Gris llevaba apagado desde 1987, cuando un temporal rompió la lámpara, el último farero se quedó sin trabajo y la municipalidad decidió que no valía la pena repararlo. Por eso, cuando los pescadores juraron haber visto su luz girando en plena madrugada, nadie en el pueblo les dio demasiada importancia.
Sin embargo, la luz volvió a encenderse el jueves siguiente, y el siguiente, y el siguiente. Carmen, la periodista del diario local, sospechaba que se trataba de una broma de adolescentes, pero cuando subió los ciento veinte escalones de la torre encontró la puerta cerrada con un candado oxidado que nadie tocaba desde hacía años. En el rellano, el polvo acumulado no mostraba ni una sola pisada.
Revisando los archivos del periódico, descubrió que el último farero, Anselmo Rial, había muerto un jueves de 1994. También descubrió algo que la inquietó aún más: su nieto, un ingeniero que vivía en el extranjero, había regresado al pueblo hacía dos meses. Nadie lo había visto en el bar ni en la iglesia; solo los niños decían que paseaba por el acantilado al atardecer.
Lo encontró esa misma noche en el acantilado, con una laptop sobre las rodillas y la mirada fija en la torre. —Entré por la vieja puerta del sótano, puse una lámpara nueva e instalé un sistema que se controla a distancia —confesó sin que ella tuviera que preguntar—. Mi abuelo decía que mientras el faro brillara, ningún barco se perdería. —¿Y por qué solo los jueves? —preguntó Carmen. Él tardó en contestar. —Los jueves mi abuelo me subía a la torre y me dejaba encender la lámpara —dijo al fin—. Me prometió que, mientras yo la cuidara, él seguiría allí arriba. Carmen guardó la libreta sin escribir una sola palabra. Hay historias que es mejor no contar.
English translation
The Punta Gris lighthouse had been dark since 1987, when a storm broke the lamp, the last keeper lost his job and the town council decided it was not worth repairing. That is why, when the fishermen swore they had seen its light turning in the middle of the night, nobody in the village paid much attention.
However, the light came on again the following Thursday, and the next, and the next. Carmen, the local paper’s journalist, suspected it was a teenagers’ prank, but when she climbed the tower’s hundred and twenty steps she found the door locked with a rusty padlock nobody had touched in years. On the landing, the built-up dust showed not a single footprint.
Going through the newspaper’s archives, she discovered that the last keeper, Anselmo Rial, had died on a Thursday in 1994. She also discovered something that unsettled her even more: his grandson, an engineer who lived abroad, had come back to the village two months earlier. Nobody had seen him at the bar or at church; only the children said he walked along the cliff at dusk.
She found him that same night on the cliff, with a laptop on his knees and his eyes fixed on the tower. “I got in through the old basement door, put in a new lamp and installed a system that’s controlled remotely,” he confessed, without her having to ask. “My grandfather used to say that as long as the lighthouse shone, no ship would be lost.” “And why only on Thursdays?” asked Carmen. He took a while to answer. “On Thursdays my grandfather used to take me up the tower and let me light the lamp,” he said at last. “He promised me that as long as I looked after it, he would still be up there.” Carmen put her notebook away without writing a single word. Some stories are better left untold.
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