apacite with newapa in spanish (apacite + newapa en español)?

Question

I was using apacite in Spanish, but I had a problem because instead of "et al" used to appear something like "y cols." which was wrong.

After looking at another answer, I've found that if I use:

%
\usepackage[bibnewpage]{apacite}
\begin{document}

Text and citations

\bibliography{biblio} 
\bibliographystyle{newapa}
\end{document}
%%

I get the "et al." like it has to be used. Now the problem is that instead of having "Martínez y Pérez (2010)", LaTeX gives me "Martínez & Pérez (2010)".

I've tried with

\renewcommand{\BBAA}{y}% Letra que va entre los autores en las referencias
\renewcommand{\BBAB}{y}% Entre autores en el texto

but it's not working, or maybe I don't know where to write those commands...

Please help me, it's for my master thesis!

Answer 1

You should never remove or modify the system versions of LaTeX packages, for a few reasons.

• TeX distributions have a method for overriding the system packages without having to disturb the system files, so it's never necessary to do so.
• Any change you make to a system version of a style file will be erased if you update your system.
• If you don't know what you're doing, your changes to a system file may break things.

For more information on how to set up a local folder using MikTeX, see these questions:

• Texmf tree with MikTeX + Vista32?
• Where do I place my own .sty or .cls files, to make them available to all my .tex files?

That being said, the problem you have doesn't require changing the .apc file at all, but instead just making sure that apacite knows that you are using Spanish, and renewing the command for the et al. text, and using the correct bibliography style for apacite (which is apacite, not newapa.)

Since this is for a thesis (and the apacite package is not being required by a particular journal) you might also consider using biblatex and the biblatex-apa package, which is a very up-to-date implementation of the APA 6th edition. There are plenty of examples of its use on the site.

Here is a sample document that shows how to solve your problem correctly:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[spanish]{babel}
\usepackage{apacite}
\bibliographystyle{apacite} % This is the style you should use with `apacite`.

% The following code generates a demonstration bib file
% This part is not needed in your actual document
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib} 

@article{suner1988,
    Author = {Margarita {Su\~ner} and Mar\`ia {Y\'epez} and Bill Smith and Fred Jones and Joe Doe and Henry Ford},
    Journal = {A Fake Journal},
    Pages = {511-519},
    Title = {The Title of the Paper},
    Volume = {19},
    Year = {1988}}
\end{filecontents} 
% This is the end of the demonstration .bib file
\begin{document}
\renewcommand{\BOthers}[1]{et al.\hbox{}}
\cite{suner1988}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\end{document}

Answer 2

When using:

\usepackage{apacite}
\usepackage[spanish]{babel} 

I runned into the same problem. Using only:

\renewcommand{\BOthers}[1]{et al.\hbox{}}

as posted before did not solve the problem. However, the following code worked fine for me:

\addto\captionsspanish{
   \renewcommand{\BOthers}[1]{et al.\hbox{}}
}

I also had to redefine many section names to comply with our thesis format, e.g.:

\addto\captionsspanish{
 \renewcommand{\contentsname}{INDICE GENERAL}%
}
\addto\captionsspanish{
 \renewcommand{\listfigurename}{INDICE DE FIGURAS}%
}
\addto\captionsspanish{
 \renewcommand{\listtablename}{INDICE DE TABLAS}%
}
\addto\captionsspanish{
 \renewcommand{\chaptername}{CAPITULO}%
}
\addto\captionsspanish{
\renewcommand{\figurename}{Figura}%
}
\addto\captionsspanish{
\renewcommand{\tablename}{Tabla}%
}
\addto\captionsspanish{
\renewcommand{\refname}{BIBLIOGRAFIA}%
}
\addto\captionsspanish{
 \renewcommand{\bibname}{}
}
\addto\captionsspanish{
 \renewcommand{\BOthers}[1]{et al.\hbox{}}
}