History of Spanish IF
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The Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world.  It is not strange
that the text games have had a great reception and development in this language.
The English influence always has been present, although it wasn't enough to
impose the term "Interactive Fiction". Spanish players prefered
to speak about Conversational Adventure; the first word undoubtedly proceeding
from the original one "Advent", which would inspire the first Spanish creators;
the "Conversational" term refers to a conversation, a chat, probably the one that
settles between the player and the game, or between the protagonist
and his environment.
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While in England and USA the phenomenon would begin to be extended at the end of
the 70s and principles of the 80s, in Spain we must wait until 1984 to see
the first adventures. An infant company named Dinamic -- soon to become the most
important in Spain -- premiered Artist, a design program for drawing, and Yenght,
the first conversational Spanish adventure,
programmed in assembler, with short descriptions.  It had many game flaws, not
limited to numerous sudden deaths. Nonetheless, it managed to bewilder many
adventurers, who enjoyed it very much.
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These would be two of big supports to the genre in its beginnings: the company,
Dinamic, and the magazine publisher Hobby Press, through its magazines Microhobby
and MicroMania. Dinamic would create a specific line for its conversational
games, among which were games created by small independent companies and games
written for Adventures AD, a group of creators in Valencia that soon would stand
out from the rest. Among the games of
the first group there was a variety of plots and styles, from classic
adaptations like " Don Quijote de la Mancha " to literary " Los Pjaros de
Bangkok " (Birds of Bangkok) with the detective Pepe Carvalho, Star Wars
parodies like " La Guerra de las Vajillas" or games set in the future such as
"Megacorp". Another strong Spanish video game company, Topo Soft, curiously did
not release a conversational adventure in all its existence.
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The real launching of the genre came in 1988 with the publication of " La
Aventura Original" (Original Adventure), the first release by Adventures AD,
which was a free adaptation of Advent, combining puzzles from the original game
with some adjustments. The game was a sales success, and its massive
distribution brought a considerable increase in fans. 
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Another cause behind the popularization of adventures was the availability of the
PAWS parser. Quill could be obtained only in English, but Adventures AD
contracted Tim Gilberts from Scotland, and together they released the translated
version of PAWS, which sold to the fans because they could construct their own
games.  This brought about an important increase in the number of these games,
especially in the years 1988 and 1989, due to the call of a
national contest run by the Spectrum's most popular magazine, Microhobby. 
Microhobby was including two fixed sections in every issue to treat questions
about the creation of these games, answered by Andres Samudio, the predecessor of
AD.
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Between 1988 and 1992 Adventures AD released six commercial games, all sales
successes up until the decline in 8-bits in 1992:
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La Aventura Original (Original Adventure)  (1988). Free adaptation of Crowther
and Woods's " Adventure ". It was presenting graphs in almost all the rooms and
was changing with regard to the original one on the game having be initiated in
the exterior of the cave, having to open a grating to give step to the second
load, which develops completely in the underground. Instead of beginning with
quotidian elements and introducing the supernatural little by little,
this version featured an elf and a dwarf in early stages, near the
volcano.
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Jabato (1989). Based on a comic character, set at the height of the Roman
Empire. Its principal innovation was the managing of several simultaneous
characters, who were crossing a great part of Europe and Africa.
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Cozumel (1990). The first title of its trilogy "Ci-u-Than", settled in the
Caribbean in the first half of the century. For many people, this was Adventure
AD's best game.  The explorer Doc Monro is shipwrecked on the coast of the island
of Cozumel, where he lives through great adventures. 
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La Aventura Espacial (Space Adventure) (1990). Intended as a bracket in the
accomplishment of " Ci-u-Than's " trilogy. It was set in the future, and had
a certain experimental flavor. Again you were handling several characters.
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Los Templos Sagrados (The Sacred Temples) (1991). The second part of the  
"Ci-u-Than" trilogy. A game of transition full of puzzles, also set in the
Caribbean jungle.
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Chichen Itza (1992). Third part of its trilogy, many people says it was the most
complete game, with a large number of NPCs and quests. It came in a difficult
moment for the company and especially for Dinamic, due to 8 bits  crisis and the
arrival of graphic adventures.
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All the games of Adventures AD had certain similarities. They consisted of two
parts, the second one loading only with a password you obtained by finishing the
first.  There were graphics in almost all locations.  They were programmed with a
parser called DAAD, which made it possible to export the games to 8- and 16-bit
platforms of the moments.  The games of 16 bits were sometimes longer
and had some more complex puzzles.
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For a time, there was some speculation that Adventures AD might gear up for the
release of graphical adventures, but ultimately they did not take this step. 
From that moment on, activity centered on the amateur clubs, which had already
come into existence and were thriving.  In games distributed by AD there was an
advertisement promoting an amateur club, which no doubt helped its takeoff. 
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The most important two clubs were the CAAD founded in Valencia in 1988 for assets
at the time Juanjo Muoz, and the Year Zero Club founded on La Corua in 1992 and
whose more visible head was Fran Morell; they assembled nearly a thousand members
and published interesting articles in newsletters. The fanzines also offered
advertising and lists of adventures that could be bought cheaply, from other
groups of fans. The production of games between 1986 and 1992, the first golden
age of the conversational games, reached 200, mostly thanks to the efforts of the
amateur game-designers. From 1992 the activity of the fans fell considerably, and
the fanzines published on paper stopped shortly thereafter. 
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Some years afterwards, the arrival of the Internet would create the second golden
age, in which the fans participated through email lists, several webpages with
that of the CAAD as reference, and an IRC channel. The CAAD webpage was created
in 1997, with few resources at first, but leading to efforts to rescue the
information in paper fanzines and provide ancient games now playable in
emulation. There was a newsgroup started, in emulation of the English forums, but
soon it was invaded with spam and questions about graphical adventures. 
Ultimately the community turned to a mailing list, now run through Yahoo Groups.
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For the 16 bit machines, three parsers appeared that
would continue the momentum PAWS gave to the creation of adventures: NMP,
Sintac and Caecho. Some also adventurers prefer programming their games directly
in C or the dominant programming language. In 1997 the two extant clubs organized
an adventure contest, in each of which fewer than a dozen adventures appeared. In
1998 the CAAD repeated the summons and received the
participation of 9 games, though the genre was remained in crisis and the
winner would not be voted on until 3 years later.
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In October 1998, a message appeared in the list of mail announcing the imminent
appearance of InformATE (Inform Now Totally in Spanish). Though in the
beginning it did not raise too many expectations, it eventually surpassed the
other systems; nowadays it is most used.
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At this point, however, and for some time thereafter, there were not very many
options for programming adventures.  They were written directly in C, Visual
Sintac (an improved version improved of Sintac that incorporates an attractive
visual environment (IDE)), or NMP, an evolved version of PAWS that only works in
MSDOS.
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At the end of 1999 the first contest of short adventures was organized.  This was
the beginning of this second golden epoch. The call for games had great
success and in March, 2000 the second edition was celebrated. The successive
organization of several from these contests (in the first one there was
established a severe limit of a locality and three objects, which later would be
extended) re-awoke the interest of the fans, who with the
support of the IRC channel and the mailing list of mail, renewed their zeal for
the genre. Some of these contests called for variants: comedy games,
games of original and strange subject matter called "nanos", games set
in Tolkien literature.  From 1999 through 2002, eight of these contests have been
organized, raising the annual production to approximately 50 games.  From 2001,
there have also been annual prizes, rewarding the set of the production.
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The mailing list has more than 160 subscribers, though only 30 or 40 are really
active -- for which reason it is possible to consider the Spanish IF community to
be a betatesting community or a small test market.
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In June 2000, the people in charge of CAAD restarted the publication of the
fanzine, this time in format PDF for web distribution.  There were a total of
seven very full issues, through December of 2000.  Almost at the same time, in
October of 2000, another digital fanzine appeared, named SPAC (clearly inspired
by the equivalent SPAG), but monthly.  It continues in good health to this day,
thanks to the collaboration of an increasingly active community. 
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Another interesting initiative of last years has been a project to recover
classic games, called Project Base.  In a short time it has managed to recover
more than a hundred classic games a decade old.
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At present, every time they are more persons who are interested by this type of
games. Some of them reappear after being away for years, others are fans of the
literature that they find rest in this type of games. There is also an
increasingly numerous group of visually handicapped users who enjoy
this type of leisure, and even dare to program long adventures in Inform.
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And what does the future bring for us? The adventurers' active community is
already employed at new and interesting projects. The nucleus attoMOLE might lay
the foundations of the successor of InformATE. Paguaglus will allow us to rescue
old adventures programmed in PAWS and to translate them to the current
environments.
Maybe someone will the task of adapting TADS and end Inform's
predominance. There are also projects to develop new ways of creating
conversational
adventures, removed from the classic languages of programming, in the shape of
visual environments or descriptive languages of creation of adventures. The web
of the CAAD will continue evolving, and as one of its many services, may attempt
to rescue the MUD that had so many successes while it functioned.
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Definitely a pleasing future for the adventure community in Spain.
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Useful links:
CAAD: http://caad.iberpoint.net
Yahoogroups http://es.groups.yahoo.com/group/caad/
Year Zero Club http://www.geocities.com/zforzero/
Proyecto BASE http://www.pagina.de/Proyecto_BASE
SPAC http://usuarios.lycos.es/SPAC/
JSJ http://jsanjose.cjb.net/
InformATE de Zak http://www.geocities.com/spinf_2000
Dhan  HYPERLINK http://www.geocities.com/lashojascaidas/
http://www.geocities.com/lashojascaidas/
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(I have to send some graphic screens)