The purpose of this paper is to describe the reception of Hašek's Švejk in Spain in the 20th and 21st Century. It also deals with the phenomenon of indirect translations (it distinguishes between the "second-hand translation" and the "authorial compilative translation") and the difficulties of metatexts (A.
Popovič). The obtained data serves to answer the following research question: What was the reaction of the Spanish public to this Czech novel? The paper analyses the "adventure" of Švejk in the Spanish milieu and focuses on critical reviews of Spanish translations of this book and a short commentary of interviews with the translators and editors.
Two translations into Spanish were used as a source for the research: the second-hand translation by A. Janés (1980) and the translation by M.
Zgustová (2008). As a methodological instrument for the micro-textual contrastive analysis of selected passages was used the Popovič's (1975, 1983) typology of stylistic shifts and changes in the translation.