Yes, you read that correctly. It’s Maria Perez vs The Superheroes - they're not working together and following their saga's will help you practice Spanish.
This is an animated show that has six episodes full of adrenaline and hidden plots that will keep you hooked to the screen while improving your Spanish and learning Latino expressions.
Who Is Maria And Why Is She Not Working With The Superheroes?
Maria is a Costa Rican immigrant that works in The Superheroes headquarters in the United States.
Through her adventures, you get a taste of what it’s like to build a new life in a foreign land, and that sometimes the good guys are in fact villains in disguise.
You'll probably relate to Maria in many aspects of her life, like how hard it is to work every day chasing the “American dream” and navigating a difficult work environment.
What started as a normal day in the Superheroes headquarters develops as an adventure where Maria, Nicholas, and Zoila (two other immigrants working in the headquarters as a concierge and chef) discover that in this story, superheroes are not, well… good at all.
In fact, they don’t really identify as villains but they do follow orders from higher ranked people in the headquarters without actually considering the consequences.
We're not going to give you any spoilers because the story develops quite fast and you will finish it in a day or less, but we'll tell you this: despite being an animated show, it has interesting political and socio-historic jokes.
Meaning, some dialogues will reflect how Latin Americans dealt with past American governments and some interventionist policies. For example, there are some jokes about invading and destroying Maria’s country, and others about fracking projects that have caused environmental problems in the Amazon.
Then again, nothing serious, just a projection of a particular culture. But we believe it’s a show with interesting human values that’s totally worth watching while practicing Spanish.
How Can María Help You Learn Spanish
The Spanish language is also called Castillian, and its origins go back to Spains’ history.
We are not going to trouble you with historical facts, so to summarize this story: the entire continent belonged to Spain for almost 300 years, and even though they implemented their language by force, each country learned it differently.
Once Latino countries got their independence, the Spanish language experienced cultural and ethnic changes.
That’s why even though Spanish is one language, it is spoken differently in almost every country where it’s considered a native language. A common example of these differences is that in Spain, the verb “coger” means “to grab”, but in Colombia “coger”, even though it’s spelled the same, means “to have sex”.
We believe this show has great value for Spanish language students because it includes regional expressions that other shows in Spanish don’t consider. And as you see in the previous example, it could help you avoid some embarrassing moments depending on the Spanish native country you are in.
Besides having funny anecdotes about Spanish lingo, you can listen to other cool and common words like “¡órale!”, an expression Zolia uses a lot because she is from Mexico, where “¡órale!” can mean “wow!” or “come on!”
Another plus about Maria vs The Superheroes is that it will completely improve your listening skills.
Since this show is narrated in “neutral Spanish” (which is the standard way Spanish speakers receive most of their dubbed shows), you can also notice how different that style is from regional pronunciations.
Worried about not catching the sentences quick enough? Don’t panic! When you start watching Maria Pérez vs Los Superheroes at LingoPie, you can speed up or slow down the audio files of each episode, so you can correctly catch each words pronunciation.
You can also select English and/or Spanish subtitles to read the dialogue and understand how to properly write some sentences, words, and expressions.
If you don’t know a word or sentence, no problem! The Superheroes won’t come to rescue you, but we will. Simply click on any word or sentence and a text box will show up on the screen with its translation.
You can review all the unknown words after watching an episode, and take a small quiz to prove to yourself how much you've learned. You can learn more about Lingopie’s tools here.
Start Learning Spanish Today With Maria Pérez!
Maria has arrived to save her country and make her American dream come true, but also to help you learn Spanish quickly.
Discover the struggles of Latino immigrants in the United States while enjoying an animated show that has so many turns of events that it's simply impossible not to binge-watch it.
You can watch all episodes here, but beware! Superheroes won’t be there to help you this time. Only María, Nicholas, and Zolia.
Checkout Lingopie, where entertainment meets effective and dynamic Spanish lessons.
