Spanish Pronto Reading Practice

The Spanish Pronto Reading Practice is an almost daily look at interesting Spanish news, vocabulary, false friends, culture, and more, that I hope will keep you interested and coming back to keep improving your Spanish.

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La Luna podría haber estado dividida en dos

Una teoría afirma que antes de que hubiera vida en la Tierra, el satélite estuvo acompaño por otro astro

La Luna no estuvo sola. Un estudio publicado este miércoles en la revista "Nature", señala que hace miles de años, antes de que hubiera vida en nuestro planeta, el satélite tenía una compañera más pequeña.

The Moon may have been divided in two

A theory asserts that, before there would have been life on the Earth, the satellite was accompanied by another heavenly body

The Moon was not alone. A study published this Wednesday in the journal "Nature" indicates that thousands of years ago, before there would have been life on our planet, the satellite had a smaller companion.

• "Planeta" (planet) ends in -a, but is masculine: el planeta.

Con chorros de agua y gases lacrimógenos, la policía chilena reprimió este jueves a los estudiantes que intentaban marchar por la principal avenida de Santiago. El gobierno de Santiago informó que la policía detuvo a 235 estudiantes y que al menos dos policías resultaron heridos.

"Esto parece un estado de sitio, me imagino que habrá sido así hace 30 aņos en Chile, durante la dictadura militar.... Ni siquiera está asegurado el derecho a la congregación en los espacios públicos", dijo a periodistas la portavoz de los universitarios Camila Vallejos.

Los alumnos secundarios y universitarios mantienen desde hace más de dos meses una movilización que incluye tomas de escuelas, paros, huelgas de hambre y marchas en demanda de cambios profundos al desigual sistema de enseñanza del país.

With jets of water and tear gas, the Chilean police, this Thursday, repressed students who were attempting to march in Santiago's main avenue. The Santiago government reported that the police department had detained 235 students and that at least two policemen had been injured.

"This looks like a state of siege. I imagine that it must have been like this 30 years ago in Chile, during the military dictatorship.... Not even the right to assembly in public spaces is assured," said the spokeswoman for the students, Camila Vallejos, to reporters.

The high school and university students have kept up a mobilization for more than two months that includes the takeover of schools, work stoppages, hunger strikes, and marches demanding major changes to the country's inequitable educational system.

• "Policía" can be masculine or feminine, depending on whether you mean the police department ("la policía" [feminine]) or the police officer ("el policía" [masculine]). If you mean the woman police officer, you can say "la policía", but it should be clear from the context (or should be clarified) that by "la policía" you mean "the policewoman" and not the more usual meaning of "the police department."

• Later in this article, the spokeswoman for the students makes a "llamado" (a call, in the sense of calling for a demonstration) "a hacer sonar las cacerolas" (to make noise with pots and pans), which is a kind of political protest, common in Chile, Argentina, and certain other countries, called a cacerolazo. It tends to be used in more extreme situations, where protesters feel like their demands are just not being heard. A series of cacerolazos brought down the De la Rúa government, in Argentina, at the end of 2001, during a severe economic crisis.