ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the possible consequences of the accepted Spanish mistranslation of the English term undead, but that is just one example – albeit a very significant one for vampire fiction, with arguably far-reaching consequences – of an identifiable misunderstanding of a foreign concept. The story imaginatively creates a confessional memoir written from his condemned cell, and even though a Spanish reader might guess this is fiction rather than autobiography, only a very few small details strike an Anglophone reader and give it away as coming from the pen of a Spanish-speaker. There is also a belief that vampire fiction is not a Spanish genre, that its popularity is mainly limited to translations from English, it is an ersatz product unworthy of critical attention. Variability in these matters precludes using any of them as defining qualities, however, and this is just as true for Spanish vampire stories as it is for those in other languages.
