José María Merino has published an edition, in modern Spanish, of this book, which is both a historic landmark and a truly relevant reading in today’s world. Who are Calila and Dimna? In the original text, two jackals who became lynxes for Spanish readers.

Of the two of them, the more modern is Dimna due to his moral relativism. “Our society is full of ‘dimnas” –social climbers and impostors who later try to pass themselves as innocent people. In that sense we have not changed a bit since the 13th century,” says Merino.

The writer and academic met for the first time «Calila y Dimna» back in his elementary school days, thanks to Sainz de Robles’s anthology «Cuentos viejos de la vieja España» (“Old Tales of the Old Spain”) (Aguilar, 1943): «The anthologist had carefully endeavored to translate into contemporary Spanish the old Castilian speech, making it perfectly understandable for the intelligence of the too-young reader that I was back then.» Upon revisiting «Calila y Dimna» —published by Castalia and edited by Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua and María Jesús Lacarra—, Merino observed that the book «not only has not aged a day, but it indeed has a surprisingly modern air, due both to the curious way the stories are structured and to the subtlety with which it describes, through the dialog, behaviors that seem to truly reflect the ambitions and secret dealings of the world we live in.”

Read more here (ABC.es)