Spanish proverbs

In Spain the anonymous popular proverbs rhyming in the form of a couplet are known as refranes. In some Latin American countries they are called dichos.

Many are observations coined by collective experience over time, with topics ranging from meteorology to the invariable and fatalistic fate of existence. They constitute the cultural baggage of the people in times in which the oral tradition passed the popular wisdom from one generation to another.

The proverbs are very old. The first written testimonies of its existence appear already in the origins of Castilian literature, thus, in the Cantar de mio Cid ("tongue without hands/how dare you speak?"). They are also found in abundance in works such as the Libro de buen amor by Juan Ruiz (XIV century) or El corbacho by Alfonso Martínez de Toledo.

The first anthology of proverbs, Proverbs that old women say after the fire, was written in the century. XV by Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana. In that same century, an anonymous and learned author composed a gloss in Latin with many of them (Seniloquium). Proverbs glaze the language of the characters in La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas.

In the XVI century, Juan de Valdés (Dialogue of the language) praised in they the purity of language. They will also characterize the speech of Sancho Panza in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes in the XVII century.