Spanish Culture Course in Madrid

Directors: Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín and Soledad Luque Delgado

Location: Room 2.A.02. Madrid Campus – Puerta de Toledo.

Target Audience

International students with B1-B2 level Spanish.
University students who wish to learn more about Spanish culture while improving and practicing their Spanish.
International senior students.
Master’s students in Spanish as a Foreign Language or related postgraduate programs.
Students of Hispanic Philology or related degrees.
Other professionals interested in teaching Spanish as an additional language.

Speakers

Directors: Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín and Soledad Luque Delgado. Link to Curriculum.
Speakers:

Soledad Luque Delgado, UC3M.
Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín, UC3M.
Eduardo Juárez Valero.
Ángel Aterido Fernández.
Sonia Pérez Castro.
Rubén Coll Hernández.
Jorge Pantoja Blanco.
Rosario Ruiz Franco.

Program

(1st and 2nd week 40 hours)

Monday, June 22
10 AM to 12 PM. Course presentation and launch of the Final Project. Soledad Luque Delgado (1h). Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín (1h).
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Geography of Spain and its gastronomy. Soledad Luque Delgado.

Tuesday, June 23
10 AM to 12 PM. Guided visit to a Traditional Market. Soledad Luque Delgado.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Classroom session: History of Spain: from colonialism to postcolonialism. Eduardo Juárez Valero.

Wednesday, June 24
10 AM to 12 PM. Guided tour of the Royal Collections Gallery. Eduardo Juárez Valero.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Classroom session: Art I: Velázquez and Goya. Ángel Aterido Fernández.

Thursday, June 25
10 AM to 12 PM. Guided tour of the Prado Museum. Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín (1h). Ángel Aterido Fernández (1h).
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Classroom session: Spanish literature: tradition and avant-garde. Sonia Pérez Castro.

Friday, June 26
10 AM to 12 PM. Guided visit to the Barrio de las Letras and the Lope de Vega House Museum. Sonia Pérez Castro.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Classroom session: Final Project (I). Creating a podcast and sound map of Madrid in Spanish. Rubén Coll Hernández.

Monday, June 29
10 AM to 12 PM. Pronunciation workshop and varieties of Spanish. Soledad Luque Delgado.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Spanish cinema and the construction of Spain’s image. Jorge Pantoja Blanco.

Tuesday, June 30
10 AM to 12 PM. Guided tour of the Spanish Film Archive. Jorge Pantoja Blanco.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. History of Spain: from the Second Republic to democracy. Rosario Ruiz Franco.

Wednesday, July 1
10 AM to 12 PM. Guided tour of the Lavapiés neighborhood. Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Classroom session: Art II: Picasso and Dalí. Ángel Aterido Fernández.

Thursday, July 2
10 AM to 12 PM. Guided tour of the Reina Sofía Museum. Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín (1h). Ángel Aterido Fernández (1h).
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Classroom session: Spain today. Social change, women, migrations. Rosario Ruiz Franco.

Friday, July 3
10 AM to 12 PM. Guided visit and meeting at the La Parcería cultural center: the new Spaniards. Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín.
12 PM to 12:30 PM. Break.
12:30 PM to 2:30 PM. Classroom session: Final project (II). Creating a podcast and sound map of Madrid in Spanish. Rubén Coll Hernández.

Course Objectives and Motivations

1. Establish the relationship between Spanish language and culture through art, cinema, and history.
2. Consolidate intermediate knowledge of Spanish through interaction and communicative tasks.
3. Acquire cultural knowledge about art, cinema, society, and history of Spain.
4. Discover cultural sites and iconic locations in Madrid through visits and experiences.
5. Obtain teaching tools and resources for future Spanish teachers.
6. Develop a didactic proposal about locations in Madrid using new technologies.

Motivations:
According to the 2025 Yearbook of the Cervantes Institute, the number of Spanish learners worldwide exceeds 24.5 million. Every Spanish as a Foreign Language learning process is accompanied by a teaching process where both learners and teachers share their interest in advancing competence and use of our language. However, we must not forget that the teaching/learning process of a language cannot be disconnected from its cultural diversity.
The course takes into account, therefore, that language and culture are intimately linked, hence progress in the proper use of Spanish will derive from interactions with cultural content, including flipped classroom proposals to achieve this and promoting shared and critical reflection on the course content. Similarly, the necessary balance between classroom and outside activities is essential for the formative and experiential learning of our students.
Finally, we must highlight the inclusion of some possible uses of technology to enhance communicative competence in Spanish, knowledge of its culture, and respectful enjoyment of one of the world’s most spoken languages, through a project-based approach, promoting interactive and dynamic learning.

Upon completing the course, students will realize that the most emblematic value of the classical world is not the elitist character of its education nor a particular monumental aesthetic (to cite two typical categories of interpretation throughout the 19th century), but rather the capacity to thematize every human problem, transforming it into a source of personal and collective teaching, fruitful and always enriching. From this experience, capable of converting the intimate drama of existence into a rational theme (thus allowing the birth of philosophy and Attic tragedy), or the difficulties of community life into political reflection, or the imitation of nature into art and technique, emerges that freedom of spirit that permeates all humanisms throughout history and remains one of the priority ideals of the contemporary world.

Furthermore, the classical tradition is much closer to the paradigms of digital culture than one might imagine: if the “digital humanities” constitute in a certain way a form of re-imagining traditional humanities, rethinking human development in relation to its history and culture through new possibilities for creating and disseminating knowledge, it is well known that the legacy of Greco-Roman civilization has performed this same task for centuries, updating itself in each era, according to the urgencies of societies that return to study Antiquity, to find in it answers about their own time.

CURRICULUM

Directors: Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín and Soledad Luque Delgado

Ana Carola Saiegh Dorín is Associate Professor at UC3M, Department of Humanities: Philosophy, Language and Literature. Professor at Carlos III International School (teaching in English and Spanish). Professor in the Master’s Program for Training Teachers of Spanish as a Foreign Language and at the Language Center (Universidad Carlos III Foundation). Professor in International Programs: CIEE, Ortega-Marañón Foundation, Accent (University of California Education Abroad Program). Trainer of Spanish teachers at the Ortega-Marañón Foundation and Cervantes Institute. Participant in the R&D&I Project Territories of Memory: Other Cultures, Other Spaces in Latin America, 20th and 21st Centuries, PID 2020-113492RB-I00.

Soledad Luque Delgado is Associate Professor at UC3M, Department of Humanities: Philosophy, Language and Literature. Professor in the Master’s Program for Training Spanish as a Foreign Language Teachers (UC3M Foundation). Professor and trainer of Spanish as a Foreign Language teachers at other university centers: Ortega-Marañón Foundation, Middlebury, Duke and Berkeley Universities in Madrid. Volunteers at the Asilim Association (Association for the Linguistic Integration of Immigrants in Madrid). Author of several publications on the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language Phonetics. Collaborates as a researcher at the Institute of Gender Studies of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Teaching Team

The teaching team for the course “The Classical World in the Digital Era: New Challenges” consists of six people, including the Directors, with equal representation between men and women (3+3). Coming from different but complementary disciplines such as Philology, Law, Archaeology and History, they have all been cooperating for many years, working together on the research lines of the “Lucio Anneo Séneca” Institute of Classical Studies at UC3M. This institute is at the forefront in the Spanish and international sphere in the field of “digital humanities,” developing a series of projects for the online publication of databases and digitization of documents related to the classical world and its survival throughout history. Regarding teaching activity related to the promotion, updating and scientific presentation of various aspects of the classical world, the six course instructors demonstrate a long teaching trajectory, of which the following activities are worth highlighting:

Francisco L. Lisi Bereterbide was for many years coordinator of the Classical Studies area in the Department of Humanities at UC3M and instructor of the undergraduate courses “Classical Culture” and “Transmission of the Classical Legacy” and the postgraduate course “The Transmission of the Classical Legacy.” Founder and first director of the “Lucio Anneo Séneca” Institute of Classical Studies.

Rosa M. Carreño Sánchez has been teaching, in both Spanish and English, the Humanities Course “Daily Life and Norms in Rome/Daily life and norms in Rome” for more than five years. This course is taught at the Getafe and Colmenarejo Campuses and is offered to students of different nationalities and from the most diverse degree programs (Law, Economics, Business Administration, Computer Engineering, etc.). She has experience in creating digital libraries, having participated in the digitization and publication of the “Antecessores” ancient legal collection of the Library of the Universitat de Girona.

Ana M. Rodríguez González was coordinator of the Conference on Greco-Roman Criminal Law: Crimes and Punishments in Antiquity, organized by the “Lucio Anneo Séneca” Institute of Classical Studies in 2008. Since then and until today, one of the lines of her teaching activity has been dedicated to disseminating how criminal justice was perceived and organized in ancient history. On this topic and others also related to Roman culture, society and law, she has taught numerous Humanities Courses and has published several didactic works intended to explain these subjects through a careful selection of texts. She has also participated in various research projects aimed at analyzing the relationship between Law and religion in the past of Greece and Rome.