In spite'of the proposals for a new reform of the language curriculum in primary and secondary education, learning English in southern Spain is still handicapped by the excessive weight of theoretical instruction and by the lack of initiatives to equip teachers with the means to make their teaching more learner‐oriented. The use of literary texts may be one of these means, as it can help to develop the learners’ participation both in the reading process and in classroom activities (in the context of Learner Autonomy), their awareness of the communicative strategies activated when reading a literary text (in the context of Language Awareness), and even their awareness of the formal resources used by the author to enhance this communication (in the context of Literary Awareness).