Mexican Spanish Stories
El último barril
The Last Barrel
A stolen Virgin. A tequila baron. One night to get her back.
Restorer Lucía Arteaga spends her days cleaning Orozco's murals in Guadalajara, until a glossy magazine shows her something impossible: the Virgen de la Barranca, the colonial painting stolen from her hometown church twenty-two years ago, hanging in the private chapel of the most powerful tequila baron in Jalisco. Now the painting is about to leave Mexico hidden inside a legendary barrel from 1942. With a fired master distiller and a climber with a broken hand, she has one night to get it back.
- Languages
- Spanish & English
- Reading level
- B1-B2
- Length
- 12 chapters
Publication in preparation. Store link coming when available.
A short sample from the opening
Capítulo 1: La foto
Chapter 1: The Photo
Aquel martes yo estaba a doce metros del suelo, acostada boca arriba sobre un andamio, limpiando el humo de cien años de la cara de un hombre en llamas. Así es mi trabajo: soy restauradora, y desde hacía seis meses trabajaba en los murales de José Clemente Orozco en el Hospicio Cabañas, en Guadalajara. Pasaba los días con un hisopo de algodón en la mano, quitando el hollín centímetro a centímetro, como quien le quita el polvo a un sueño. Abajo, los turistas miraban hacia arriba con la boca abierta. Arriba, solo estábamos el hombre de fuego y yo.
That Tuesday I was twelve meters off the ground, lying on my back on a scaffold, cleaning a hundred years of smoke off the face of a man on fire. That’s my job: I’m a restorer, and for six months I had been working on José Clemente Orozco’s murals at the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara. I spent my days with a cotton swab in my hand, removing the soot centimeter by centimeter, like someone dusting off a dream. Down below, tourists looked up with their mouths open. Up above, there was only the man of fire and me.
-Lucía, baja un momento -me gritó Fabiola, mi compañera, desde el pie del andamio-. Tienes que ver esto.Bajé por la escalera de metal con las rodillas entumidas. Fabiola tenía en las manos una revista de esas que hay en los consultorios de los dentistas, de papel grueso y brillante, con fotos de casas de millonarios. La abrió en una página doble. Era un reportaje sobre la Hacienda La Soledad, en Tequila, propiedad de don Aurelio Villaseñor, el dueño de una de las casas tequileras más antiguas de Jalisco. Fotos de jardines, de fuentes, de salones con muebles antiguos.-Mira la capilla -me dijo.
“Lucía, come down for a minute,” Fabiola, my coworker, shouted from the foot of the scaffold. “You have to see this.”I climbed down the metal ladder, my knees numb. Fabiola was holding one of those magazines you find in dentists’ waiting rooms, thick glossy paper, with photos of millionaires’ houses. She opened it to a two-page spread. It was a feature on the Hacienda La Soledad, in Tequila, owned by don Aurelio Villaseñor, the owner of one of the oldest tequila houses in Jalisco. Photos of gardens, of fountains, of salons with antique furniture.“Look at the chapel,” she said.
This is a short excerpt. The full novella has 12 chapters.
Explore the other books