An Online Quest for Spanish Literature Available in the Philippines

Okay so you know what happened when I looked for Spanish books in bookstores... Now I will tell you how I got the four books I am now reading one by one. Hehehe.

In case you haven't read the first part of this post you can check here. So, let me tell you what I did next!

Online Book Hunting

Since I had a quite disappointing result from my first store hunt, I decided to try online sellers. There are many people selling used books on social media sites so I was sure I'd find something.

I didn't want to buy brand new ones so I just checked some second hand book selling groups in Facebook. Too bad the only thing I found there is one that's BookTok famous last year. It's a romance book in English. 😂 Okay am not gonna mention it so you don't get distracted. 😆
*(hashtag for book recommendations on TikTok, which I didn't check)

Since that was no different to actual bookstores I checked the Marketplace instead. Voila! I found a few of them! (No I never checked Shopee because it sucks. I did not check ANY other actual online stores at all. Only Facebook and Viber marketplaces. Yes I know I've been brand dropping since the first part of this post. I didn't get sponsored though, I wish. Haha.)

Suffice it to say, I didn't find any Spanish stuff in the two online places I looked in. So I just inquired from the sellers in the marketplace in Meta.

Unfortunately one of the books I inquired about at a really good price suddenly got bought after a few hours! I was like, incredulous! How could someone else buy it when it was posted 13 wks ago! And then suddenly it gets sold the next day after my inquiry!? Dang. So unfair. 😅

Meanwhile there are also other legit and specialty bookstores with a Facebook presence. The brand new and significant (Philippine and history related, etc.) books are really expensive too! Of course I could not buy them because I don't even understand the language that much yet.

Other than that I was able to find secondhand and really good ones from two individual sellers. One lives in Cavite province while the other one is from Manila City.

Last weekend I finally got all four books I ordered! Batch one was via personal pick up and batch two via delivery. 😀 All of these are second hand ones. Three are actually imported. No surprise there. Haha. Two are in quite new and very good condition. The rest are not bad at all.

The oldest one I haven't opened yet because it looks... old! The seller said it was from a local antique shop. Well it's a very good find imho! Online there aren't any search results coming up for Literatura Filipina en Español compiled by Carmen N. San Agustin. So I dunno if it's a great find or not... still what's inside should be useful.

Oh Yeah! Success!

Now I have everything. For sure I do! I could buy some more children's booklets but nah. I think these are enough for now.

Will all these really help me? It should! It's all up to me now. Huhu. What if I don't become fluent? Omg I dunno what else to do if I don't. 😂 How long it will take me really depends on the things I do from now on.

On another note, it looks like I need to buy another dictionary. It must be the Spanish-English one because I realized the one I got is not really helping me enough while reading. 😅 (No I don't think there's any Spanish-Tagalog one at all.)

I began reading Sopa de Pollo para el Alma (Chicken Soup for the Soul) and saw some words I didn't know. Unfortunately I don't have the right book to check the meaning. 😂 Had to go online just to satisfy my curiosity. Well... that means I will not be reading it until I have what I need.

Meaning I'm reading the next book now which is the Spanish Coursebook. It has lessons and short tests too! Am definitely doing well on the first few quizzes. I always get perfect scores haha. Hope I can continue the trend 'til the end. Although if I am quizzed without choices I will have a harder time... 🤔

So far most of the quizzes I've done since December are either multiple choice or matching types. There's this one site though where you have to translate the English words to Spanish and that's where I stumble a lot. Haha. Just goes to show I need to know and do more.

Ah... Not sure what I will write about next in my Spanish learning journey. For now I will end my online study journal here. Until the next blog!

What do you think I will (or should) write about very soon? Hahaha.

The Hunt for Spanish Language Books in Metro Manila Bookstores

It's been almost two months since I started self studying the Spanish language. Because I seem to be improving slower than I expected, I decided to start reading books. Yes I know we can all read online and such but it's so much better to read something in hand physically and not on a screen. 😁

No I'm not a bookworm anymore, nor an "accidental" tsundoku practitioner. 😆 I've sold most of all my books when I started decluttering. It's been a decade or so haha. For the first time in seven or so years I have gone out and online just to buy books or even comics!

Admittedly I thought it would be easy to learn this language. Why not when there are many Spanish loaned words in Filipino. If only I knew about the most important thing to learn before I started this... 😂 Just knowing Spanish words is not enough to understand sentences.

The verbs and conjugations are so... perhaps the hardest to learn. Haha. And then there's the more complex sentence construction, omg. But mostly I think my laidback and 'anything goes' approach is what's hampering me. 😅

Okay I won't bore you with my complaints so let me just tell you about how hard it is to find Spanish books in bookstores! Who knew it would be quite non-existent!

Let's go a-hunting in bookstores!

Last week I finally decided to buy any Spanish book I could find. After working on my customer's custom temporary tattoo order, I went to the nearest bookstore I know.

Someone told me they were able to buy Spanish books at a certain second hand store almost a decade ago. Well if they had some then they should still have some now right? Off I went to BookSale in Cubao. Unfortunately I never found any. I even asked the sales people but they said they didn't have any. Awww.

Next I went to a National Bookstore branch in the same mall. I asked the cashier and checked the aisles and nothing. Huh. 🤔 Of course I didn't want to give up so I decided to go to the big branch. I believe it is one of the major branches too. Good thing it was just in another mall connected to the first one I went to.

Guess what I found there? 😂 The branch only had one type of Spanish book: two kinds of trilingual dictionaries and nothing else. (English - Spanish - Tagalog) Man, I almost feel sorry for the lack of Spanish literature anywhere. 😂

Bought this one from the available dictionaries.

Of course I was happy to buy one of them. Actually I'm psyched to find it has Filipino translation too! Makes it so much easier. ♥️ However I felt like just this one is not enough.

Before I went home, I dropped by the last book shop in the area. Sadly the Fully Booked branch also didn't have what I was looking for. Tsk tsk.

I guess it's worth noting, Spanish seems to have been completely erased in our culture. Specifically, all the books in the bookstores are in English and Filipino only. 😆 (Except for the other English-Filipino-foreign language dictionaries.) Even the travel books doesn't have any Spanish speaking countries displayed. I saw France, Italy, etc., but no Spain or Argentina, etc. 😂

Must be because of all the hate our ancestors had for the first colonizers? We mostly weren't treated well for 3 centuries. Ugh, imagine a caste system, that's racism + colonialism. 🙄 Well at least it wasn't slavery but still...

Anyway good thing I was able to find something. My efforts did not go to waste. Haha. It's already the 21st century so I will learn Spanish because I want to. It should be way easier than learning Japanese or Korean. Imma learn this first before the other languages. Or I might give up again, who knows. 😂

On Friday I went to another branch of thrift bookstore in another city. Well hey I was able to find some there! Whoa! Too bad I didn't like any of them... 😅 Also the price wasn't low enough for me to even consider buying. Oh well...

I'm not really looking for premium books since I am buying just to familiarize myself with the language. That's it. Unless I become fluent in Español I will not consider buying something premium.

Because of this, I had to find another way to buy the books I needed. Stay tuned for the second part of this post! 😀

Why Are Spanish Books Not Available In Major Bookstores?

Apparently in the 1987 Philippine Constitution (or even the previous one?), Spanish was not included anymore as a national language. No harm done imho because at the time Filipino and English were already prevalently used.

The main reason is (most probably) because there aren't many Spanish Filipinos left. If there are, maybe they use English more often? I dunno, I think they are a dying breed. Haha.

This is so unlike the Chinese Filipinos (Chinoys). They actually put up several Chinese schools where Filipino Chinese (FilChi) and Chinoy children are also taught Mandarin (and Fookien?) among other things.

Also, Arabic is being taught at an early age to our Filipino Muslim brothers in the far southern islands. So you see, it makes no sense to keep a language that almost nobody uses. Thus is the fate of Spanish in the Philippines...

Vintas of Zamboanga by Jojo Lacerona, CC BY-SA 4.0

All is not lost though. We do have Spanish Creole in the country called Chavacano. This can be found in the province of Zamboanga in the Mindanao group of islands. It is still prevalent there as far as I know.

Not sure yet where or which area exactly but I'll find out soon! Any Spanish speaking person (or Spanish language student) would probably not feel too out of place there.

I also read the Chavacano version in Cavite province is already becoming extinct. Might as well go to Zamboanga instead if ever, hehe. That's where I'm planning to go later this year just to hear them use it. (Lord I hope I will be able to go!!!) Also so I can see actual and colorful vintas that I've read in school books when I was a kid! 😄🙏

Ah I am excited to do that so I need to save some money! Haha. Will be going there by ship if I can. Traveling by sea is more fun because I get to see the ocean a lot. Hehe.

Well wish me luck with that plan. For now I will write some more about how I found the Spanish books I got. 😁 Can you guess what I did? Haha.