The aim of this research was to find out whether, by reading literary texts, Spanish language learners are able to understand the cultural elements of a language, attributing possible meanings to them in the context of the narrative, and whether this understanding and signification enables them to expand their communicative competence. To this end, two short stories in Spanish were selected: "Rodriguez", by Francisco Espinola and "Nos han dado la tierra", by Juan Rulfo, for which reading tests were prepared. These tests, administered to classes on the Language and Spanish Literature Complementary Degree course at UCS, showed better performance in the reading test for the short story "Nos han dado la tierra", a result attributed to a less crystallized prior view of the central elements of the narrative and to the contextualization text that made up this test. When reading the short story "Rodriguez", the students only transferred their previous meanings about the cultural elements addressed in the narrative, failing to identify the "gaucho" portrayed in the story as an "other".