Problems with location and et al in spanish apa6 BibLatex

Question

Good morning.

I'm a bit newbie with BibLatex, and having several issues. I'll show you first a little MWE of my code:

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{article}
\usepackage[spanish,es-tabla]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[backend = biber, style = apa]{biblatex}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{spanish}{andothers={et~al\adddot}}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{spanish}{spanish-apa6}
\addbibresource{references.bib}
\begin{document}
\setcounter{smartand}{1}
\selectlanguage{spanish}
First cite: \parencite{santiago2008patrones}, \parencite{santiago2008patrones}
Second cite: \parencite{mill1869system}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

My bibliography file has the below content:

@article{santiago2008patrones,
  title={Patrones, generalización y estrategias inductivas de estudiantes de 3º y 4º de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria en el problema de las baldosas},
  author={Cañadas, María C and Castro, Encarnación and Castro, Enrique},
  journal={PNA},
  volume={2},
  number={3},
  pages={137--151},
  year={2008},
  publisher={Grupo Didáctica de la Matemática. Pensamiento Numérico}
}
@Book{mill1869system,
  title={A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Princilples of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation},
  author={Mill, John Stuart},
  year={1869},
  publisher  = {Harvard University Press},
  location   = {Nueva York}
}

When I compile my files, I get the following:

Here, I detect, almost, 2 errors.

First one: the first appearance of the first cite should look like (Cañadas, Castro y Castro, 2008), but et al. is shown.

Second one: location of the second cite is not shown in the list of references. In an equivalent document, where I'm using apatite and BibTex, I don't have this problem.

Thanks you very much in advance!

Answer 1

The behaviour you are seeing is correct APA style according to the 7th edition of the manual (from 2019). See https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/author-date, https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/elements-list-entry and https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/book-references.

That's what you get from a current version of biblatex-apa's style=apa,.

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{article}
\usepackage[spanish,es-tabla]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=apa]{biblatex}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{spanish}{andothers={et~al\adddot}}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{santiago2008patrones,
  title     = {Patrones, generalización y estrategias inductivas de estudiantes
               de 3º y 4º de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria
               en el problema de las baldosas},
  author    = {Cañadas, María C and Castro, Encarnación and Castro, Enrique},
  journal   = {PNA},
  volume    = {2},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {137--151},
  year      = {2008},
  publisher = {Grupo Didáctica de la Matemática. Pensamiento Numérico},
}
@Book{mill1869system,
  title      = {A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive:
                Being a Connected View of the Princilples of Evidence
                and the Methods of Scientific Investigation},
  author     = {Mill, John Stuart},
  year       = {1869},
  publisher  = {Harvard University Press},
  location   = {Nueva York},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\setcounter{smartand}{1}
\selectlanguage{spanish}
First cite: \parencite{santiago2008patrones,santiago2008patrones}
Second cite: \parencite{mill1869system}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

The behaviour you want is 6th-edition APA style (from 2009), which you can get from biblatex-apa6 with the style=apa6, option.

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{article}
\usepackage[spanish,es-tabla]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=apa6]{biblatex}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{spanish}{andothers={et~al\adddot}}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{santiago2008patrones,
  title     = {Patrones, generalización y estrategias inductivas de estudiantes
               de 3º y 4º de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria
               en el problema de las baldosas},
  author    = {Cañadas, María C and Castro, Encarnación and Castro, Enrique},
  journal   = {PNA},
  volume    = {2},
  number    = {3},
  pages     = {137--151},
  year      = {2008},
  publisher = {Grupo Didáctica de la Matemática. Pensamiento Numérico},
}
@Book{mill1869system,
  title      = {A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive:
                Being a Connected View of the Princilples of Evidence
                and the Methods of Scientific Investigation},
  author     = {Mill, John Stuart},
  year       = {1869},
  publisher  = {Harvard University Press},
  location   = {Nueva York},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\setcounter{smartand}{1}
\selectlanguage{spanish}
First cite: \parencite{santiago2008patrones,santiago2008patrones}
Second cite: \parencite{mill1869system}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

---

Note that in either case you won't be needing and should not be having the line

\DeclareLanguageMapping{spanish}{spanish-apa6}

A line like \DeclareLanguageMapping{spanish}{spanish-apa} was needed in old versions of biblatex-apa back when it implemented 6th-edition APA style. But that line has not been necessary since November 2017. A line with \DeclareLanguageMapping{spanish}{spanish-apa6} has never been necessary, since the first version of biblatex-apa6 was released after November 2017.