The Stub Book

                                                                      Pedro Antonio de Alarcon, Spain (1833 – 1891)
Summary in English

This is a short Spanish story by Alarcon. The major event of the story beings in Rota, the smallest town in the bay of Cadiz. Rota is the smallest of those pretty towns that forms the great semisecret of the bay of Cadiz. The major character of the story is Uncle Buscabeatas who solves the mystery of lost pumpkins by using his creative and critical mind. Therefore, this story tries to represent the dedicated hardworking farmers of the town, Rota.
The land is fertile where hardworking farmers can grow crops three or four times per year. As uncle Buscabeatas a hardworking farmer, he seeks fertilizer for the groups. For that, he attends daily and takes care of the plants. He loves them too much and gives different names, too. In other words, he loves his vegetables and fruits like his own children.
Uncle Buscabeatas had grown forty good pumpkins. He worked very hard to love and take care of them. He was very conscious of size, number and names of all pumpkins. He decided to see those pumpkins in the market so that he could get the money as the successful achievements of his work or profession. He made a golden dream for that. However, his plan and dream got failed when all his pumpkins were lost next morning.
After losing all pumpkins, he became so sad and guessed that the thief his pumpkins to the market and sold them for money. Thinking such, he directly went to the market. He reported a policemen and he went to vegetable market along with him (Policemen). Several people gathering along with Inspector about this case. As inspector asked who stole his pumpkins, Uncle Buscabeatas recognized that his pumpkins were stolen by Uncle Fulano. He already came to know that Uncle Fulano did not have good crops in his farm. Then, people started laughed at him when he told different names of his lost pumpkins.
There was a great debate between Uncle Buscabeatas and Uncle Fulano about the lost pumpkins. Uncle Fulano challenged him to show the proof. Uncle Buscabeatas started matching the steams with the pumpkins to show proof among the people. At the end, all people supported Uncle Buscabeatas. He got victory over Uncle Fulano. In short, Uncle Buscabeatas got praised in his truth proof and Uncle Fulano got punished/arrested in his crime.