Two autobiographical graphic novels for the Spanish class

I'd like two introduce two graphic novels that have two of the features that I have considered important in previous posts: they portray personal stories and deal with controversial issues that can lead to discussions and research in our classes. The authors, Cristina Durán and Miguel Ángel Giner, are a couple of artists from Valencia, Spain. They have produced numerous artworks since 1993 in fields such as text books illustration, publicity, comics, etc. at their own art studio.

In 2009 they published their first autobiographical graphic novel, Una posiblidad entre mil (A chance out a thousand). Cristina and Miguel Angel have their first child, Laia, but her life is at risk starting when she was born due to health issues. Their daily routine consists of visiting hospitals, rehabilitation units and doctors. There is only one chance in a thousand for the baby to survive and she fights to grasp it with all her strength, affecting everyone around her with her zest and optimism for life.

The novel follows the authors' physical and emotional trip until Laia starts to go to school. We witness their devastation when they have to assume Laia´s condition that will affect her for the rest of her life. But we also witness their determination to shower their child with love and care through this often harsh journey.

Some  of the the discussion themes in the novel are:

• Parenthood
• The integration of handicapped children and the acceptance of the differences
• The role of family and society
• The importance of determination to achieve our dreams

La Máquina de Efrén, published in 2012, is the continuation to Una posibilidad entre mil. The graphic novel continues the journey initiated after Laia's birth. Cristina and Miguel Ángel always wanted to have one more member in the family, an adopted child. Both authors tell us the process of getting an adopted girl from Ethiopia. We experience their excitement, their anguish through all the bureaucratic process and the joy of achieving their goal of having one more child in the family. We also witness their trip to an unknown country for them, Ethiopia, and share their respect for a country full of problems but full of dignity too.

As in Una posibilidad entre mil, there are numerous topics to discuss with our students:

• Parenthood
• Responsibility
• Adoption
• First world versus third world
• Multiculturalism
• The right of everyone to happiness

Our students will definitely enjoy following Cristina and Miguel Angel's emotional journey through parenthood, compromise and commitment to their family and values. They will get attached to the characters and will realize about the importance of learning to respect the differences and being able to accept everyone. 

The authors talk about their work together and about adoption in La máquina de Efrén.
The graphic novels' website.
The authors' study website.
Pillada por ti, a free online comic on violence against women by the same authors.
Article in newspaper El Mundo on Una posibilidad entre mil.
First pages La máquina de Efrén
First pages Una posibilidad entre mil

Short stories by Gabriel García Márquez for

On April 17 Gabriel Garcia Márquez died in Mexico city. Little is left to be said about one of the most influential writers of the 20th century and, more importantly, one of the most read and beloved worldwide.

Naturally, the best we can do with a writer is to read and to enjoy his or her stories. And García Márquez was a master storyteller. He used the power of imagination to write his  realistic yet magical stories. He also could go deep into people´s hearts and show all the power and contradictions of people´s souls. Furthermore, he was a master of the language rivalling that of Borges. 

I am aware of the difficulty of reading a full novel like A Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish in a secondary school. Luckily for us, García Márquez wrote several novellas, that we could use, and many short stories which students in an IB or bilingual Spanish program can fully understand and enjoy. His first short story, La tercera resignación, was published in 1947 and the author continued writing short stories for almost his entire life.

I'd like to introduce 5 of his short stories, although I am sure that many others can be used.

In the book Doce cuentos peregrinos, short stories Espantos de agosto and Me alquilo para soñar

I recall Garcia Marquez explaining what magic realism is in a interview on television. He mentioned that if we say: "vi un burro volando", nobody would ever believe us. However when we can give many details about a magical or unrealistic situation, everyone would believe us no matter how absurd it is. In the interview he said that if he wrote in a novel "vi 276 burros volando", everyone would believe him. Something similar happens in the short story, Espantos de agosto. The main character visits his friend´s house in Tuscany with his family. The old house was built by a member of the nobility during the Renaissance and it is haunted. As a reader I was not impressed. But when the narrator tells us how they visit the 85 bedrooms in the house, I started to believe that such a house must have at least one ghost and probably more.

Me alquilo para soñar

Garcia Marquez also mixes detailed reality with real-life characters with his magical and ironic world in this story. A lady who has been able to foretell the future of her family since childhood is hired by a rich family in Vienna. She was asked to tell them their fortunes through interpreting her dreams. Garcia Marquez meets her in Vienna and she warns the author to leave the city because he was in danger. When her boss dies years later she moves to a house in Portugal from where she can see the whole sea up to the Americas. Then she will meet Garcia Marquez in Spain during Neruda's visit and we realize that her powers are still intact.

Book, Los funerales de la Mamá Grande, Un día de estos

Garcia Marquez liked to portray Latinoamerica as a land where the supernatural is intertwined with every day reality at all levels. But he was also very critical with the social and political situation of his country, Colombia, and by extension of all Latinoamerica. This short story is a good example to explore this with our students.

Book, La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y de su abuela desalmada, the short story Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes.

This short story is another good example of magic realism. The fate and luck of a poor Colombian family changes when they find an old angel after a storm and take him home. The angel becomes a celebrity and people "from all over the world" come to see him. Things get so complicated that even the local priest has to intervene. After many years living in very poor conditions, the strange angel flies away and the family is relieved.

Ladrón de sábado

This is a beautiful story full of irony and humour. Hugo is a thief who only robs houses on the weekends. One weekend he robs Ana´s house, the conductor of his favourite music radio program when she is at home. He feels so comfortable that he decides to spend the weekend with Ana and her daughter, taking advantage that her husband is away on a business trip. Soon, his weekends will be busier than usual.

There are thousands of websites where we can get information about García Márquez' works, his life and his political opinions. I recommend to have a look at these three web sites:

• El País newspaper published several articles about the author after his death, we can track his life and his works in this article. 
• Interview to Chilean writer Isabel Allende, also after his death.
• Conversation between the Nobel Prizes winners García Márquez and Vargas Llosa, which took place in 1967. They discuss about writing, magic realism, Latinoamerica, their literary influences and many other issues.

Cielo Abajo, the battle of Madrid in a novel

Cielo Abajo by Fernando Marías

Fernando Marías is a writer  and  publisher. He has written novels, film screenplays and short novels for young adults. He has also received numerous awards among them: Anaya award for young adult novels 2005 and the National Award to the best Book for Children and Young Adults 2006 (Premio nacional de literatura infantil y juvenil), both awards for Cielo Abajo.

Plot
Joaquín Dechén has lived all his life in an orphanage in Ávila province. When students are 15 they leave the orphanage with a letter to either become a priest or join the army. Joaquín joins the army when Franco, with a part of the Spanish army, rise against the republican government. In the army Joaquín meets famous pilot Luis Cortés, who becomes his mentor. Luis sends Joaquín to Madrid to spy on Ramiro and Constanza, Luis' dearest friends before the war.

Joaquin discovers the terrible effects of the war on innocent people and realizes that Luis, a Francoist supporter, has not kept his word of defending the republic. Joaquín is torn between this harsh reality and his loyalty to Luis Cortés, the man who taught him everything. Things get more complicated when he falls in love with Constanza, a beautiful, sensitive woman expecting a child. Out of love he decides to help the republic but when both Costanza and Ramiro die in a bombing he joins the Francoist army again.  The couple leaves a daughter also named Costanza in the same orphanage where Joaquin lived.

After the war Joaquin is a respected pilot and spends time looking for the young Costanza. Joaquin tries to help her as much as he can but she disappears from his life again after having a daughter also named Costanza. When he is an old man, after the second Costanza´s death, he renews his relation with the third Costanza, a young independent woman who learns from Joaquín the passion for planes.

Joaquín writes his story in a book that he plans to give the third Costanza as a present. This story was discovered by a young unsuccessful writer who gets a  part-time job decorating old Joaquín's apartment. While he was painting, a book comes in the mail for Joaquin. As a young writer, he couldn't resist taking a look and we follow the story while he reads the book and tells us how he meets Joaquín and young Costanza. We realize that Joaquín is giving him a present too, a good story to write a book about it.

The book is beautifully written and introduces lots of themes that we can use for discussion in a novel study:

• Love (platonic, filial, admiration...)
• Loyalty and betrayal: Luis/Ramiro and Vicente Rojo
• Personal growth and the search for an identity. 
• The search for dreams
• Culpability
• Revenge
• Loneliness
• The evolution of the role of women in Spain

The novel depicts the so-called battle of Madrid in the fall of 1936. The Francoist troops were planning the assault to Madrid. Joaquín witnesses the meetings to coordinate the defense of the capital. Historical figures who took part in the battle appear in the novel such as Varela, Lister and Vicente Rojo. Joaquín is impressed by Vicente Rojo's integrity. He was a high rank military man but unlike Franco or Luis Cortés he remained loyal to the government because he had given his word to defend the Spanish republic. He organizes the defense of Madrid and coordinates all the different armed groups that existed at the time.

Cielo Abajo can be a good text to do a novel study with our advanced students. It portrays important historical facts very accurately but it also tells us a beautiful love story. 

More links
Author´s website
Anaya publisher study guide 

Webquest on the novel 

Interview in Canal Literatura  

Two novels set in the Spanish Civil War

To finish with resources about the Spanish Civil War, I'd like to introduce two novels aimed at young adult readers. Both books are love stories set at the time of the Spanish Civil War and we also follow the main characters' lives after their traumatic experience in the war.

Noche de Alacranes by Alfredo Gómez Cerdá.

Alfredo Gómez is one of the most prestigious and popular writer for young adults in Spain. He has published over 80 books which have been translated into many languages. I have introduced some of his books in previous posts and again I recommend the short novel Barro de Medellín to students in a bilingual or IB programs.

Plot
An old woman, Catalina Melgosa (aka Delgadina) is invited to talk to high school students in León, a city in Northern Spain. The retelling of her young life during  the Spanish Civil War makes her have a Noche de Alacranes, a night of insomnia. During this sleepless night she recalls her teenage love for Emilio and how she got involved in the war. She keeps memory tokens in a cookie tin. Looking at these tokens triggers flashbacks about momentous events in her life. 

As a teenager Delgadina lives in a village in León province and is in love with Emilio. Both come from different social backgrounds as Emilio belongs to one of the richest families in the area. When the war starts the region is soon taken by the Francoist troops and a period of repression starts. Many young men escape to the nearby mountains to continue the fight, among them Delgadina's brother. They are known by the name of 'maquis' fighters and Delgadina becomes their contact with the rest of the world, taking food and other supplies to them and being their mail.

When the group of 'maquis' fighters kidnap Emilio, a Franco supporter, Delgadina helps him to escape out of love. Soon after, all the 'maquis' fighters are killed by the Francoist police and Delgadina escapes to France where she gets married and has a family. Many years later, she returns to León as a widow and gets the invitation from the high school. The event is shown in the local newspaper where Emilio learns Delgadina has returned. Soon, they meet for a coffee 50 years later.

The novel shows the repression that the Francoist troops and police took on the citizens who supported the Republican government. It also portrays the life and fate of the 'maquis', the guerrilla groups who continued fighting Franco for many years even after the end of the Second World War. But the novel is also a beautiful love story between two young innocent people who were merely puppets engulfed by war and the social and political turmoil in Spain. The novel also reflects how fate influences our lives to an incredible extent. Finally, the novel serves to educate new generations and encourage them to take interest in 'Memoria Histórica', which has become a political policy in Spain.

More links:
Reading guide
Author´s website
Interview to the author
The author speaks about Noche de Alacranes 

Juegos Inocentes Juegos, a novel recently published for the Spanish class

One of the main goals for this blog is to showcase resources that can be used in Spanish bilingual or IB programs (not only novels, short stories or poems to work in class but also resources for independent and enjoyable reading in Spanish). Today I am going to talk about a short novel published in 2013 by Ricardo Gomez. Gomez visited Alberta in 2012 when I was in Spain so I was unable to attend  his school visits. However, it is an author I discovered some years ago and I have wanted to talk about in the blog for a long time.

Ricardo Gomez has written poems, books for adults and books of the so called "literatura infantil y juvenil", books, aimed at children and young adults. I know that numerous authors, including Gomez himself, disagree that such literary category exists. They believe that there are only good or not so good stories but the term can be useful to understand that we mean stories that young readers can find attractive. Ricardo Gomez is definitely a special case among writers because he portrays teenagers and their world in a very accurate and realistic way (not in vain he was a Math teacher in secondary schools in Spain until 2004). As he mentions on his website, he felt he was reborn after taking the decision of becoming a full time writer.

We can learn more about the author on his website. I particularly recommend to have a look at his conferences on mathematics issues that he has discussed in schools and universities. These are also  available online. The conferences deal with attractive topics like the relation between literature and maths or how to make maths more entertaining for students. There is also a section to raise awareness about the situation of the refugees in the Sahara desert. Of special interest is the Bubisher project which tries to support children´s education bringing them a mobile library to the refugee camps where they live.

There is also a reference to all of his books in his web, some for adults and some for children and teenagers, although the author says he wonders if there is a separation between both. I will talk in another post about some of the books which can be helpful for our bilingual programs: La Selva de los Números and Las Hijas de Tuga which tell us the story of the discovery of maths by Tuga, a very smart turtle. I will also speak about Ojo de Nube and Cuentos Crudos, which deal with issues which affect us all, and 3333 set in a not so distant technological future.

       

Juegos Inocentes Juegos was published in 2013 and won the XIII Alandar award for books for teenagers, given by Edelvives publisher. Sebastian, spelt without an accent as it is normally in Spanish, is seventeen and lives with his divorced mother. He goes to a high school, is not a good student and he keeps to himself at school. But Sebastian has a double life that makes him different from the rest of peers: he has been testing video games for a multinational company and getting a lot of money out of it.

We then learn about his monotonous life with his mother at home and at school but also all the problems his family went through. He doesn't have many friends and does not get along with teachers. It seems that his virtual life is more realistic and rewarding than his actual life. But the video games can hide something much more sinister. Sebastian is very good, cool and intuitive with the games. Little by little we learn that some of the prototypes that has been trying are drones (UAV, unmanned aerial vehicles) used to fight in wars. And soon, without Sebastian being aware, he will be participating in real battles killing real people in an unknown country far away. At the same time that this is happening Sebastian is becoming more sociable and meets Patricia, someone he is really attracted to. At the end we see all the damage caused to the small community far away by the drone attacks and how Sebastian was just part of a superpower's plan (readers slowly realize that the attacked location is Afghanistan).

It is not a book with a plot full of action, the rhythm is quite paused. We follow Sebastian´s story through the chapters, alternated with chapters where the life in the small community in Afghanistan is portrayed and the chapters in which military men are designing the new warfare. The book also brings up important topics like the fine line between reality and fiction, the power of the 'governments' over all of us, the growing difficulty of intimate personal communication, the growing pains teens experience, the lack of opportunities for the young generations in Europe and so on.

Another important reason why the book can be good reading for our students is the precise language used by the author which is very appropriate for second language learners. At the same time Ricardo Gómez knows the young people´s slang and he uses it in his books very accurately.

I highly recommend Juegos Inocentes Juegos for our students in a bilingual program though it is an equally interesting story for independent reading.

La División Nueve enters Paris!! An unknown historical episode for the Spanish class

Some years ago we had one presenter in my school in Spain who was an an old man who had fought in the Spanish Civil War. His main aim was to share his life experiences during and after the civil war. It was the first time that I heard about the concentration camps in Southern France that held around half a million Spanish citizens in very harsh conditions in the beginning of 1939. When World War II broke out some months later, most of these people who fought for the Republican government in Spain were offered 3 alternatives: to be sent back to Spain and stand trial, to build trenches and walls to protect the  French borders in the Maginot Line or to join La Legion Étrangere and fight the Nazis as a separate unit.

Our presenter in the school, as most of the Spanish refugees, joined the L E. He told us what it was like to be in a second war. Some months later, he was taken prisoner by the Nazis and sent to a work camp in Central Europe. Conditions were terribly harsh and the prisoners had to work long hours producing boots and uniforms for the German army. There are two things that stayed in my mind about his experience: one was the extremely harsh treatments that people of other races received (since they were deemed even more 'inferior' than the Spaniards). He recalled how the Hungarian gypsies in the camp were treated with particularly harsh methods. Another memory was that it took him two years after leaving the camp to start gaining weight, because his body had been so worn out.

When they were set free in 1944, he returned to his old battalion and continued fighting until the end of the war in 1945. It was the first time I heard about the stories of the Spanish exiled in Europe after the war and their involvement in World War II.  After Hitler´s defeat, they were ignored by the Allies, by France and naturally, by the Francoist regime in Spain. To make things even more devastating, the Allies' promise to rid Spain of Franco was never fulfilled. For 60 years their story was forgotten and they never got any recognition. People from lots of nationalities fought against Hitler but the Spanish republicans were the only ones who had no country to go back to.

In the 1990's people in Spain started to wonder about the fate of these people and their role in World War II. This way, to the astonishment of many Spanish people, we discovered that the Spanish soldiers from la Division Nueve were the first allies to enter  Paris and reach Paris city hall.

In 2010 French film director Alberto Marquardt produced a documentary about two of the last survivors from la División Nueve, Manuel Fernandez and Luis Royo. In the documentary, both remember their incredible experience as teens living in the Spanish republic to becoming adults through the turbulent Second World War. Through this short time span, they lived through the Spanish Civil War, being exiled in early 1939, being imprisoned in the concentration camps in France or in Northern Africa, and entering Paris as the liberators in August 1944.

In the Instituto Cervantes' website in Paris we have the opportunity of following the division Nueve's footsteps and experiencing their entrance into the city hall in Paris on August 24, 1944. It was the Guadalajara tank that reached city hall first. The website also includes links to websites and articles related to this historical events. Rutas Cervantes

A novel that recreates all this historical period very accurately is the best seller, Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamis in its English version) by university lecturer and writer Javier Cercas. The author mixes fact and fiction to recreate the life of Antonio Miralles, a fictional Republican soldier who saves the life of Sanchez-Mazas, one of the founders of the Falange political party. Sanchez-Mazas recalled this episode in his life years later when a republican soldier spared his life .

After the war, Miralles would follow the same fate as our aforementioned heroes: living in concentration camps, and 5 more years of war in campaigns in Northern Africa and  with La Nueve against the Nazis. 50 years later a journalist (the novel´s author) contacts him to learn more about his episode with Sanchez-Mazas. Miralles is now an old man who lives in a seniors' home in France and he recalls his experiences to the author. Although this story is similar to the story of  Manuel Fernandez and Luis Royo depicted in the documentary produced by Alberto Marquardt, the novel depicts these experiences through the author's eyes. As this novel is fictional, the different layers that the author adds to the story may make history even more multidimensional to young people.

The novel´s language is quite complex for secondary students, this should not be a mandatory reading but to be recommended to students with a good command of the language to enhance their learning. No matter if you read the Spanish or English version of this novel, it will prove very fascinating if you are genuinely interested in the Spanish Civil War. We can also show the adapted film produced in 2003. There are quite a lot of activities available online about the film that we can use:

• Activities about the novel and film
• Activities in Revista Tecla, Ministry of Education
• Activities from Spanish film festival in Nantes 2012

In my next post I will speak about the recently published graphic novel, Los surcos del azar, by Paco Roca . The story goes back to the same events and shows the life of another of the republican soldiers who took part in the liberation of Paris.

More sites for good books in eduPLEmooc

I'd like to continue showcasing websites and blogs which provide information and reviews about books that can be used in a Spanish bilingual or IB program in Alberta. I came across these three resources from the eduPLEmooc course that I am taking. 

Last week we started our group research projects. It was actually very difficult to narrow it down to one topic but eventually, I chose digital storytelling. The working group has over 30 members who come from several countries. They all work in different educational settings and thus, this makes group work more challenging and enriching at the same time. The reasons why I chose the group are these:

• I want to learn about the  tools to create digital stories, something I have not had the opportunity to do before.
• I am really interesting in sharing pedagogical approaches on how to better introduce storytelling in a classroom
• I want to hear about other teachers' experiences, especially in second languages teaching and how they use storytelling to improve  the students' writing outcome.

As the course is a mooc, an open course,  we are also showcasing all of our projects to each other. I have been regularly reading what other groups have uploaded and I came across some very interesting links to get information and reviews about books for our Spanish bilingual or IB programs. These are trhe three resources I would like to share today.

A board in Pinterest kept by teacher, Toni Solano, who gives us lots of tips and suggestions for good books to use in a secondary school in Spain. I find it very intresting it because there are many references to books for young adults that can be useful for our classes and school libraries. The board is open and anyone is welcome to join and share.

Some of the educators who have been including suggestions in the Pinterest group also share a Google group about books and reading. It is open and the information that everyone supplies is also very interesting. A must-follow for all of us working with bilingual programs in Alberta.

Some of the many resources shared by the Google Group is the magazine La pagina escrita, published by the foundation Jordi Sierra i Fabra. I have already spoken about this foundation when I introduced the Jordi Sierra i Fabra awards for young writers. In the magazine there are interviews and conversations with writers, famous for their books for young adults, many of them have been already introduced in this blog. We can also find book reviews and reading suggestions. However, the section that includes short stories by young writers can be very useful for us as teachers. Every number includes 3 or 4 short stories plus around the same number of poems written by writers no older than 23. Because of the closeness in age, our students will no doubt find these stories very relevant to their lives. These may even inspire them to write Spanish stories of their own!

eduPLEmooc has proved to be a great tool to learn form each other and share resources and information. I hope that we will have lots of interesting resources to share very soon about digital storytelling.

Blogs to get ideas about books for Spanish Bilingual Programs

In a bilingual program we have to work with books, do novel studies and analyze poems and songs. We also need, and this is essential to offer a succesful bilingual program, to give students the opportunity to use Spanish for pleasure, to discover other cultures and about themselves. It comes to my mind what Jorge Luis Borges said about reading:

Reading should not be obligatory. Should we ever speak of  'obligatory pleasure'? [...] I have always advised my students: If a book bores you, leave it; don't read it because it is famous, don't read because it is modern, don't read a book because it is old. [...] If a book is tedious to you, don't read it; that book was not written for you."

From the beginning, I have introduced novels, short stories and comics for our IB or Bilingual Spanish classes. I would use some of these resources to work with students in the classroom to do novel studies, comment or to be used to do projects. We all have limited  time so many of the resources I have introduced would be available for students as independent reading. I am trying to accommodate different authors, approaches, styles and countries of origin so every student can find resources that interest them. If we achieve that students see Spanish as a way of approaching reading for pleasure, we have certainly won an important battle.

I have already singled out around 200 short stories, comics and novels. I'll be introducing these resources in this blog and I want to have them available in my classroom so students can have access to them. Naturally, I want to continue finding new resources and the three blogs I am going to introduce are a great source of information to continue completing our list of resources and be aware of novelties.

Letras y escenas is a blog kept by Alba Úriz in which she gives reviews of books. We can find reviews of novels by some of the most famous authors for young adults in Spanish. The list is broad and includes some of the last published titles so the blog is a good way of keeping up with novels. Another interesting item is the fact that the blog has over 2000 followers and their additional suggestions and comments to the reviews make visiting the blog even more worthwhile. 

Revista Babar is a very interesting case. It started as the magazine of the literacy program of Federico Garcia Lorca school in Arganda del Rey, Spain in 1989. The project was led by Antonio Ventura, a teacher in the school at the time. The magazine was published in paper until the year 2000 and since then it is published only online by some of the old students and teachers in the  mentioned school. Fortunately for us, all the previous numbers have been digitalized and are also available online. The magazine offers several sections and includes reviews of children´s and young people´s books. New articles are regularly published and there are always references to new novels and classics. All teachers are invited to submit their a book review or to talk about a reading activity developed in their school. This is a great opportunity to showcase a resource we regularly use or talk about our school projects.

GRETEL is the Research Group on children's and young people´s literature and literature education directed by Dr Teresa Colomer from Universidad Aútonoma de Barcelona. The research group is formed by professors and doctoral students from the same university, secondary teachers as well as some external specialists. The website offers an incredible amount of information and resources about writers, didactic resources, references to PhD research etc. There also is a thorough list of recommended books organized by their target ages. The list includes titles both in Spanish and Catalan as well as the versions in these two languages of books and comics originally written  in a different language.

The three blogs I have just introduced are great sources of information about books and comics that have received a positive review by professors and teachers involved in literacy programs. We can take advantage of their expertise to build up our own resource centre and introduce books in our classes.

Spanish Civil War 3, Novels and a Short Story

I have been introducing resources on the Spanish Civil War. In this post, I'd like to suggest three novels and a short story which give us good insight about that period of time in Spain and its repercussions.

Some of these readings were written by members of the International Brigades or the journalists who covered the Spanish Civil War. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell and For Whom the Bells Toll by Ernest Hemingway are unique resources because they provide readers with an analysis of Spain from the perspectives of foreigners who witnessed the civil war in Spain. I particularly like the reflections of Orwell , and how he felt at lost many times with the unruly ways everyone in Spain had. Despite this, he also praises the generosity of the popular class in Spain and their kindness towards him. These two novels were written in English so they can be used in any Spanish program as suggested texts to learn about the Spanish Civil War.

For a bilingual or IB program my suggestions are: the novel Requiem por un Campesino Español by Ramón J. Sénder and the short story La Lengua de las Mariposas by Manuel Rivas.

The novel takes place in a small village in Aragón, north-east Spain in 1937, a year after the coup d'état led by General Franco and the breakout of the Civil War. Mosén Millán, the parish priest is getting ready for the Requiem Mass which he is going to celebrate in memoriam of Paco, a young peasant from the village. Paco was killed a year before, just after the start of the Spanish Civil War. While his sits in the vestry praying, Mosén Millán remembers various stages of Paco's life. He recalls his birth, his baptism, the fondness they felt for each other when Paco was a child. Later in life, he blesses Paco's marriage in church but their friendship falls apart when Paco gets involved in politics and tries to improve the lives of the poorest in the village after the arrival of the Republic. To achieve this he clashes with the wealthiest landowners who don't  in the village but own most of the land. Mosén Millán disapproves of Paco's behaviour and his support of the Republican government when the Civil War starts. Soon the insurgents take control of the village and Paco flees the place and hides in a farm armed with his gun. Mosén Millán convinces him to give in because he was promised that Paco would be given a fair trial. Despite the promises, Paco is executed without a just trial and a year after only don Gurmensindo, don Valeriano y Cástulo, the 3 people who were responsible for his execution come to his Requiem Mass.



This very short novel depicts the situation in many villages in Spain at the beginning of the Civil War very accurately. In many cases, atrocious murders were committed in the name of political stability when really, they were motivated by old resentments. The author uses symbols to represent the different parties involved in the conflict. On one side don Gurmensindo, don Valeriano represent the old traditional Spain, that is supported by the church, Mosén Millán, a Spain who does not want any changes. Cástulo is the new rich, the bourgeois, who supports the Republic at the beginning but soon changes sides for the winners. Numerous other symbols appear in the novel and students can track them and discuss their meanings. There are numerous proposals to work with the novel are available online. This link offers some resources that can be useful.

La Lengua de las Mariposas is one of the 16 short stories in the book Que me quieres Amor by Manuel Rivas. It is set just before the burst of the Civil War. Moncho, known by the name of Gorrión, tells us about his childhood in a small village in Galicia, north-west Spain. He remembers his fear before going to school because his dad told him about the harsh methods used by the teachers in his time. His first day at school ends in disaster and he runs away after peeing his pants. However, there is new political system in Spain which promotes a different approach to education and tries to give everyone a good education,  regardless of his or her social class. Don Gregorio, the teacher, takes Moncho under his protection and soon an intense relationship begins between them. Don Gregorio visits Moncho´s house and together they go on excursions where Moncho discovers the mysteries of Nature. Moncho and the rest of the students are fascinated by Don Gregorio who teaches them to be free and treats them with respect.



Moncho´s dad supports the Republican government, the same as Don Gregorio. As a token of gratitude for his kindness with Moncho, his dad, a tailor, makes Don Gregorio a suit for free. However, something is starting to change, new people come to the village and Moncho sees that nobody trusts anyone any more. It is the coup d'état. Moncho´s mother takes the initiative and burns all the books spouting ideas in support of the Republic. She also takes her husband to church and tells Moncho that her dad never made a suit for Don Gregorio.

A few days later while all the villagers gather in the main square to support the new regime they witness that the new authorities are taking the Republican supporters away to prison. Among them, Don Gregorio is hardly able to walk. The crowd calls them traitors and reds. Moncho wants to insult his old teacher but he can only utter the names of birds and butterflies that Don Gregorio taught them at school.

This is a beautiful story that deals with values such as tolerance, freedom, the role of education in society. It also shows how these values are fragile and they can be taken away from us and make us hate  what we love best out of fear. These activities based on the short story by Marita Lüning, Landesintitut für Schule, Bremen, can be a great tool to work with our students. The short story is also available in a mp3 file online.

These are suggestions of texts that can help students to learn more about the Spanish Civil War and understand how the war affected people's lives in a tragic way.

Short Stories to learn about Christmas in Spanish speaking countries

In a previous post I spoke about three short novels for children which introduce the topic of The three Wise Men. It is a tradition that is worth teaching in high schools too.

In the website Albalearning there is a section dedicated to short stories related to Christmas celebrations. Besides, there is a mp3 file for each story so students can listen to the short story while they read.

Navidad en los Andes, a short story by Peruvian writer Ciro Alegria, depicts how Christmas was and probably still is in a small community in the Andes. The writer remembers his return from school to his parents' house for the Christmas vacations. He describes the preparations for the big meal with very traditional Peruvian products and  shared by all the members of the community. Then he enumerates some of the rituals for that special day such as the carols and the dances. It is surprising to me to see that some of the carols that appear in the story have exactly the same lyrics as the traditional carols in Spain. Another tradition where all the family got involved was the layout of the Nativity Set. He tells us about the gathering of the different plants to ornate it, something I used to do when I was a child in Northern Spain.

Ciro Alegria was a writer who showed the situation of the native Peruvians in his works. The oppression they suffered from the elite Peruvian class, most of them descendants of Europeans, was the main theme in his works. In this short story, he points out that Christmas was the only time of the year when the white leading class mingled with the "indios" and the "cholos", the mixture of native American and European who were the servants in the farms. In the story the author describes the dances and songs performed by all the young girls in the community together, regardless of their race or social class.

 

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In the same website there are more Christmas stories available, some are classics most of us are familiar with but we can also find some quite unknown stories in Spanish. They are  good readings to learn about the vision of the tradition of the Three Wise Men which some famous writers in Spanish had. I particularly like El Regalo de Inocencia by Concha Espina. Concha Espina was one of the first female writers in Spain who had great success in her time, she was even proposed for the Literature Nobel prize. She was born in Northern Spain and she shows the customs and traditions of the people from the countryside in that part of Spain very accurately in her works.

Inocencia, the main character in the short story, is an 18-year-old girl who works as a maid in a mansion. She is pretty but simple and she lived in a small village all her life before starting with her job. On the eve of January the sixth, she is asked to set a table with coffee ready for the the Three Wise Men, who are coming to bring presents and are tired and cold. Everyone goes to bed except for the house masters and when Inocencia gets up after a sleepless night she discovers that the kings had drunk her coffee and left a handkerchief for her as a present. Everyone keeps quiet so she does not find out what really happened. The short story shows the life of the young peasant girls in Spain at the end of the 19th century and the kind of life they had while they worked for rich families, their tasks and duties. Inocencia embodies this hard-working but innocent people who still believed the Three Wise Men were real.

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My third choice, El Partido de Reyes by Manuel Rivas, is a beautiful short story written by a master of the genre. The story takes place in the 60's in La Coruña, a middle-sized city in Northern Spain. The narrator tells us about Félix, one of his school mates who suffers Down syndrome. Félix always does his best in any activity he takes part in. He loves football and despite his unlimited effort he is just accepted in the role of ball carrier by the rest of students, a task he does with complete dedication. On January the sixth, a holiday for schools in Spain, the students have their big match against the tough boys from another neighbourhood. The big day comes but they are one player short, their captain has deserted the team out of fear. However, Félix has followed the team like he always does and he is brings his new ball, a present brought by the Three Wise Men. After some hesitation, he is asked to join the team. He takes his position, does an outstanding job and even scores the goal for the equalizer after a tough game. To his team mates he becomes the hero that, without knowing, has always been.

 

This is a beautiful short story full of tenderness and realism and which depicts very accurately the life of young boys in a small city in Spain. It also includes plenty of themes that we can discuss in our classes: the role of religion, how to integrate students with learning difficulties in a school and in society, what it means to be brave and support your team, etc. On a personal note, the story brings memories of my childhood in Northern Spain and the football games in the rain in winter when we played against boys from another neighbourhood, in many cases on January the sixth.

 

The short story is part of a book called "Cuentos de un Invierno", published by Alfaguara serie Roja, which contains 7 more short stories, all of them linked by the recurrent theme of winter. All these short stories can be used for one of our classes and I will write about them soon.

El Arenque Rojo, a great tool for reading and writing in the Spanish Class

I had the pleasure of meeting Gonzalo Moure in 2009 when he was invited  to work with the Spanish bilingual schools in Calgary and Edmonton. Prior to his visit, students read and worked with some of his books to prepare for their exchange with Gonzalo. I was lucky to be present for most of his visits to schools and I have to say that he has the gift to spark students' curiosity and knows how  to communicate with them. I have worked in education for many years and I know how difficult it sometimes is to engage students in discussions and make them aware of realities far from their lives and Gonzalo is a master of this difficult art.

In one of  the classes there was an animated discussion about writing stories. Gonzalo told the students that he could write a story which contains love, passion, death and mystery with only 11 words: "la gacela pensó que el tigre era hermoso, un segundo antes". He was playing with the imagination of the reader who is going to build up a story suggested by only 11 words. To our astonishment, a young student said that she had created a short story which suggests so much with only 8 words: "Reina quería matar a Rico, pero le amaba". Now, when we work with "microrrelatos", flash fiction, I always give students these examples to prove how literature has the power of suggesting and making our imagination work.

 

Gonzalo has published over 30 books and has won numerous literary awards. Several of his books have also been recommended by the prestigious International Youth Library, The White Ravens. His books are written for children, teenagers and young adults who are and in many cases the main characters in his stories. I always say that it is not easy to write for children and teenagers because one has to write in an informative manner but in a way that the children would not feel like they are being patronized. Gonzalo is a master at achieving this.

I also find his books attractive since they deal with social or environmental issues. His love for nature and particularly horses is one of recurrent topics. He also has a passion to talk about his experiences with working with the refugees from the former Spanish colony in the Western Sahara, one of the harshest places in the world. He has committed himself to help the children in this community offering them access to books and reading with the project of the Bibliobus, a wandering library who takes books on an old bus to the refugee camps scattered in the desert.

There are many books that deserve to be blogged about and I will do it sooner than later. I just want to introduce El arenque rojo, published in 2012. The book has an attractive, original format and can be a beautiful tool to use in our classes.  The first striking thing is the fact that there is no text in the book. We follow the red herring in a park at different moments in a busy evening in Spain while we leaf through the pages. We follow El arenque rojo which is perhaps leading us to wrong conclusion  Around the herring, hundreds of stories are shown to us through the beautiful drawings by Alicia Varela, the illustrator. There are children playing, parents with kids, grand parents reading or passing through after shopping... even the author is watching everything while he rests on a bench. And there are as many stories as our imagination can tell. On the last page of the book, there is a surprise, an attached envelope with various of the stories happening in the park according to the author. But he invites us to write the rest or reinvent those already given.

I think the book can be a great resource to invite students to write or reinterpret stories. It will make it easy for students to realize about the power of imagination and how stories can be told in almost uncountable ways. A great tool to encourage students to enjoy reading and telling stories.

Gonzalo speaks about how the book was conceived and its goals in this post on his blog.

SM publisher introduces the book on its website where we can read some of the stories in the envelope and we are encouraged to publish our story in it.

I highly recommend El arenque rojo to work with our students. I also encourage schools to try to invite Gonzalo Moure to visit them. He is a master engaging students in all kinds of activities and I am sure during his visit students will enjoy an incredible experience.

Resources in Spanish to better understand The Middle Ages: Poetry

The Middle Ages can be an engaging topic to talk about with our high school students. Although there is not a specific unit about the Middle Ages in the Social Studies curriculum, students have learned about the Renaissance in grade 8 and explored nationalism and the foundations of some European nations in grade 11. By high school, students also become acquainted with Shakespearean plays such as Romeo and Juliet, set in medieval Italy and they also get to know some Middle Age English classics. Along with cultural and historical elements students will be able to learn about the origin of Spanish language and literature,.

I will be discussing some related resources and literary works that can be used with our students to get a deeper insight of the Middle Ages. I have four poems for your consideration:

• A poem by Juan Ruiz, Arcipreste de Hita, from the school Mester de Clerecía
• A jarcha, kharja in English - a short poem written in the Islamic kingdoms in Spain
• A villancico or a lyric poem related to the troubadour tradition
• A romance, a narrative poem related to the tradition of the epic poems

If there is a writer from the Middle Ages in Spain I keep on reading and revisiting, this is Juan Ruiz, Arcipreste de Hita. The first half of the 14th century when he lived was extremely complex and Spanish society was changing rapidly. I find every aspect of Ruiz's life interesting, especially since little is known about him though many new facts are being discovered. 

 

El Arcipreste just wrote one book called El Libro de Buen Amor. The book is a heterogeneous collection of stories in verse, each of them telling a comical  tale with a moral. The stories are the pseudo-biographical romantic adventures of the writer, a priest. At the time the policy of  celibacy for priests was initially implemented in Spain. The Spanish kingdoms, in particular Castille, had been isolated from the rest of Christianity because of the Muslim invasion and not all the policies dictated by the Vatican were enforced.

The book is humorous, witty, and often critical of the different institutions. There are many interesting sections that we could use with our students, for example, the encounters of el Arcipreste with the mountain women, las serranas. My suggestion would be to use the poem Lo que puede el dinero, where the author criticizes in an almost cynical way about the negative influence of money in the society including the Catholic Church. 

Jarcha means "final" in Arabic. They are the final refrain to a larger poem written in Arabic, the muwashshah. Most of the jarchas were written in classical or Andalusi Arabic, the variety spoken in the Islamic kingdoms in southern Spain. About 70 of them were written in the Mozarabic language spoken by the Christian minority at the time in the same region of southern Spain . The language is mainly Romanic with many Arabic and Jewish elements. The jarchas were written in Arabic characters, which makes them unique in the European tradition. The jarchas are the oldest poems written in a Romanic language in Europe because most were written in the 10th or 11th centuries.

 

Most of the jarchas are recited by females and they speak of love, especially unrequited love or impossible love. Some of the protagonists are married women (probably in arranged marriages), who are unhappy and pine for their true love. In the Language Arts blog of IES Casas Nuevas high school in Spain, we can find a very  good selection of Middle Age Spanish poems. There are four jarchas in this selection and number 4 is a beautiful sample to work with our students.


 

If we want to give our students a deeper insight about the jarchas and the time and area where they were produced, this short clip is very informative.

The jarchas are undoubtedly related to the popular poems of the rest of Spain.  They were the traditional songs sung by everyone and they are also related to the troubadours style from southern France. They are short, with a simple in structure and most of the times portray an impossible relation between two young lovers. There are more examples in this website. Poems number 3 or 30 can be a good example to work with our students.

The last suggestion is to work with a "romance". Romances are narrative poems, of variable length, which became very popular in Spain in the 14th century. They were sung or recited by professional juglares, a kind of popular troubadours. Their themes are war, chivalry, impossible or unrequited love. Many are based on historical events although some are not very historically accurate.
 

La voz de los romances is a collaborative project by a group of schools in Cordoba, Spain. Their goal is to build awareness about the value of reading aloud and oral tradition. Schools select romances and students recite them. The mp3 files are available online along with the poems organized by styles. We can use this website to select the romances we want to work with. Two suggestions:

• Romance del Prisonero is a short romance with just 16 verses. It is a monologue by a prisoner who tells how he feels about his lack of freedom in spring when everything is in bloom. 
• The second romance is La doncella guerrera. In a period when human rights, especially the rights of women, were not considered a priority, several romances portray women that disguise as men in search of their own destiny. This is one example of them.

These are my suggestions to work with our students in a bilingual or IB program. They can help our students to better understand the Middle Ages in Spain and the origins of Spanish. These works of art can also be related to what they read in ELA and to some of the topics they work with in Social Studies. I´ll speak about medieval prose in my next entry.