Lorca gave a reading of his latest work La casa de Bernarda Alba to some friends on July 15th. The next day he returned to Granada intuiting that his country was on the cusp of war. There he stayed with his friend and fellow poet Luis Rosales whose brother Pepe was the leader of the local Falange faction. One month later Lorca was arrested and taken to Víznar.

Bienvenid@ de nuevo,

In this week’s newsletter:

1. Edition 106 of Boletín (grammar search and tier 2/3 vocabulary).

2. The La casa de Bernarda Alba Facebook discussion group.

3. Teacher tips to candidates (this will be updated periodically).

4. A teach meet (in person!) in London.

5. Lorca takeaways from previous Boletín editions.

6. Resources to teach La casa de Bernarda Alba.

7. A student friendly PDF print out of this newsletter.

Edition 106.

Edit: I had no idea you could embed files within Substack. At the bottom of this newsletter there’s a downloadable, student friendly version of this newsletter to use in class.

As is customary now, this is my annual Lorca edition. I hope it ties in well with the other Lorca editions (44 and 74).

A lot of Lorca has already been covered in Boletín (see below for the takeaways). In this edition the texts will be about the days leading up to Lorca’s death, his childhood home and what makes Lorca somebody that young people today can look up to (this last text was written by Blanca and is recycled from a resource I’ve had on TES for years).

I would have loved to have included extracts from a newspaper which covered all the finer details of Lorca’s return to Granada from Madrid and his subsequent arrest and murder from the Virtual Spanish Civil War Museum but I didn’t get round to it so I’ll leave the link here to come back to at a later date.

Grammar to find this week:

1. An example of “leísmo” (using the indirect object pronoun “le” instead of the direct object pronoun “lo” is known as leísmo. This is extremely common.

2. The past perfect tense (había + past participle).

3. The present perfect (he + past participle).

4. The present tense.

5. The imperfect tense (aba/ía)

6. The preterite tense.

7. The imperfect and preterite used together where the preterite interrupts an ongoing action in the past.

8. The passive voice (ser in any tense + past participle).

Tier 2/3 vocabulary this week:

• Las injusticias sociales - social injustices.

• La derecha - the political right.

• Temas - themes/topics.

• Estar al borde de - to be on the verge/cusp of.

• Dar un paseo - to go for a stroll or euphemistic of mudering/killing somebody.

• El alcalde - the mayor.

• Poner en marcha - to launch, implement or start up.

• Asequible - accessible.

• Denunciar - to denounce.

The La casa de Bernarda Alba discussion group.

La casa de Bernarda Alba remains the most popular text to study in Wales according to the WJEC Summer Report and judging by the number of teachers in the LCDBA Discussion Group on Facebook it still reigns supreme in England too.

Feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of teaching literature having not had the opportunity to do so on my PGCE I created the discussion group as a place to share ideas and more importantly resources. I didn’t envision it growing to 1,200 members.

The files section is now full of teacher created resources and members chip in with answers to LCDBA community questions such as:

If society was so traditional back then, how was Bernarda allowed to marry for a second time? I feel that she would have been forced to remain a widow for the rest of her days? Thoughts?

or

Technical question - if an A2 essay asks about “recursos estilísticos” how broad do you think it is? Should students cover all of language, stage/set directions, symbolism or just some of it?

Join the LCDBA discussion group

There are lots of other discussion groups based on the set texts and films, here are a few I could find:

The Volver Spanish AQA sharing group.

El Laberinto Del Fauno - Discussion Group.

Como Agua para Chocolate A Level Spanish group.

Please note that these groups are in all likelihood intended for teachers and not learners.

Teacher tips to candidates.

I recently asked the La casa de Bernarda Alba discussion group three questions which I will share below along with some of the answers I got back.

1. What do you consider essential socio-historical context to be aware of in relation to La casa de Bernarda Alba?

i. Lorca's childhood, the influence women had on him and where he grew up. A generic knowledge of what Spain was like just before the civil war and the causes of the war. (Diana)

ii. The Spaniards' obsession with 'el qué dirán' it's quintessentially Hispanic. Mantener la fachada a como de lugar! Perhaps the equivalent of British stoicism depicted in films and series. The role of women of the time as well as the social conventions. And Lorca. What motivated him, why the recurrent themes in his obras. (Sol)

2. What's the most niche La casa de Bernarda Alba insight you have which you consider overlooked?

i. The hints of possible sexual abuse, that go unsaid: the late husband with the maid and with his stepdaughter Angustias, the victim blaming of Paca la Roseta who may have been gang raped. (Tim)

ii. That Librada’s daughter (La hija de la Librada) was victim-blamed for a stillbirth/ neo-natal birth from having concealed her pregnancy, received no medical care, before giving birth unattended. I think that one of Poncia’s functions is to make us look critically at our own engagement with gossip: when we accept the stories about Paca, and Librada’s daughter, we’re being no better than the village gossips themselves. It’s to stop us looking smugly at the Casa, I think…

The biggest clue to Poncia’s embellishment/ spin on stories is Paca. Once we’ve read it, I always ask my students to consider how many women would consensually have sex, in a public place, with more than one man at a time. Oh, and be carried, naked, through the village by them. (Anna)

iii. I find Bernarda's call to put carbón ardiente “en el lugar de su pecado” especially revealing, not just of her sadism, but also of the fact that she considers the real sin to be the sex, not the abandonment of the baby. (Tim)

iv. The character of Bernarda was based on one of Lorca’s neighbours growing up called Frasquita Alba "una viuda de muchos años que ejercía un inexorable y tiránica vigilancia sobre sus hijas solteras". There was a well (with no water) on the patio which Lorca would go down to in order to spy on them. (Ollie)

3. What's your main advice to candidates when it comes to the essay?

i. Answer the question!! Underline key words, make sure you refer back to the question and link every point you are making to it. As you are writing your essay keep asking yourself: am I answering the title/question of the essay? (Diana)

ii. Choose your question carefully, write a plan, even if only brief, to help keep you on track, don’t write a long introduction where you are just repeating the question as it’s a waste of words, answer the question with clear, well referenced points and don’t introduce new material in the conclusion. Quotes are not required and if not used properly, can detract from the answer. (Sam)

iii. Plan your essay to make sure that everything you write is relevant to the title. If you don’t plan, you might waffle, then panic. Remember to link back to the title. (Rosie)

If you’re reading this as a teacher of La casa de Bernarda Alba feel free to leave a comment below with your answers and/or advice!

Leave a comment

A cara a cara teach meet (finally!)

It took me by great surprise last week to receive a message from the Spanish Education Ministry’s London office inviting me to deliver a workshop for them in June in London alongside lots of other practitioners. It will be the 2023 version of an event ran last year which you can see here.

My workshop will be about teaching the text and film. Not to undersell myself here but I’m not going to be delivering anything revolutionary but rather talk about my process when it comes to film/text from the pre-read/watch phase, to building plot/character/thematical/socio-historical knowledge to finally planning and writing the essay.

I’ll share more details in time on Twitter and via the newsletter for those that may be interested. It would be really nice to meet some people after years of webinars.

Lorca takeaways from editions 44 and 74.

The poor. Federico García Lorca grew up in an agrarian and illiterate Spain, where his father owned land and his mother taught hundreds of peasants how to read; his early writings were dedicated to the suffering of laborers, which ignited his empathy for the poor and his social sensitivity.

Frasquita Alba. The poet confessed to the then Chilean ambassador that growing up he would spy on a mysterious family, including an elderly widow who tyrannically monitored her unmarried daughters.

Social awareness. In La Casa de Bernarda Alba Lorca criticized traditionalism, patriarchal violence, hierarchy, Catholic fanaticism, and authoritarianism in a "documentary-style photographic" depiction of the intolerant and repressive mentality shared by many landowners in Granada.

Multi-generational households. The anthropologist J.A. Pitt-Rivers studied the social structure and way of life of pueblo in the Alpujarras in his book People of the Sierra, which examines topics such as community, courtship, and gender roles. In the village he observed that elderly parents who can no longer care for themselves usually live with their daughters but are seldom happy. The author explains that parents who did not raise their children properly face old age with shameless children who often abandon them.

Andalusian death rituals. In his thesis on Andalusian death rituals, Salvador explained that the mourning period could last up to five years in extreme cases, with conventional rules dictating that the family remain at home for at least three days after a funeral, with women praying the rosary, wearing black clothing, and limiting their behaviour. Lorca claimed that what people claimed in his work were his own inventions were in fact authentic details he had observed.

La casa de Bernarda Alba resources.

🆓La casa de Bernarda Alba parallel reader with index.

🆓Avoiding the passive voice with La casa de Bernarda Alba.

🆓Public opinion of Lorca (reading comprehension).

🆓A student booklet about Lorca.

🆓Cosas lorquianas vocabulary builder.

🆓Lorca entrevistado - An interview with Lorca about el cine ruso, el porvenir del futuro, La Barraca and la cuestion social compiled from various interview books (with reading comprehension and exam style questions).

💷A bundle of premium resources featuring student directed reading activities, character analysis and related verbs, quotes PowerPoint flick, symbolism and what/how/why.

That’s it for another week. I could have gone on and on but I will leave it there and now enjoy what remains of my half-term battling my garden enemy - bindweed.

Download edition 106 here.

Print out a student friendly version of this newsletter below.

Newsletter 106

354KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Ollie

❤️

A reminder that Boletín extras are available. The most useful of which is an updated index of topics from 1-100 including an index of exam style questions for targeted interventions based on mocks.

Boletín 80 is out now!

To achieve top marks in the year 12 essay for AO4 students must demonstrate:

Very good knowledge of different aspects of the culture and society of Spain and Spanish-speaking countries and communities appropriate to the question set.

and

Arguments developed and justified and conclusions drawn with appropriate evidence from the source material.

I am excited about this edition which has taken much time during half-term to create. Once again my wife did her fair share as well. I simply can’t afford to spend this much time on an edition during a normal week at school and so I must apologise for two consecutive Almodóvar issues.

Edition 74, which followed the same format with an honus on secondary sources, had such a big impact on my teaching of La casa de Bernarda Alba that I wanted to replicate it with Volver. Now, I know that the markscheme rewards evidence from the source material (as above) but I want my students to blow examiners away with extra film knowledge learnt from reading around the film and the director and so this edition is born of that.

In edition 80, within the context of Volver, students will learn about la solidaridad feminina, los raices rurales and los instintos maternales. I would like to say a big thank you to Dr Ana Maria Sánchez-Arce (who you can find her here and here) for kindly sharing her research on Volver in the form of a chapter entitled Motherlands taken from her book The cinema of Pedro Almodóvar. Having taught Volver for five years (probably not that long in the grand scheme of things) and thinking that I knew a lot about the film it was humbling to read her research and insight into the film. Her book, currently in hardback, can be found here but is due to be released in paperback soon!

The illustrated books from this edition are again all available in my classroom A Level library and I will detail some of them below which have been insightful. I must be honest though, some I found quite hard reads and put down.

Pedro Almodóvar Interviews - available here.

When I first watched Volver with no prior knowledge of the director I was quite confused. I enjoyed the film and I definitely thought Irene was actually a ghost. I picked this book to learn a bit about the director in his own words. Not many people know that my degree is in drama, my disseratation was about politics on stage in post-WW2 Germany. Thus reading about a director’s influences and interpreting their intentions I find fascinating. Especially when they get political and have their finger on the pulse such as the Historic Memory Law/exhumations of mass graves which feature in Almodóvar’s new film Madres paralelas.

Volver (the script) - available here.

If you teach Volver and haven’t read the script then I reccommend you do. Not only do you get to read the stage directions, see a story board and high quality photos from the set but you also get the pleasure of reading essays by Pedro Almodóvar on various themes which come up in the AS paper.

The cinema of Pedro Almodóvar - available here.

If the chapter Motherlands is anything to go by then this will be an excellent resource for teachers of Volver.

Volver zero prep teaching booklet - available for free here.

Obviously I had to find a way to include my own main Volver teaching resource in this post. The booklet I made contains scans of various articles from authentic Spanish magazines, texts on the main themes, sections of character analysis and relationships, director’s techniques (camera, sound and colour) and some quotes as well.

Thoughts on Volver by @VEverettmfl - part 1 and part 2

I am reminded of some great writing by @VEverettmfl whilst checking on fantasy football team (hoping Southampton keep a cleansheet, Broja scores and JWP blanks). Vincent created a mini-league for MFL teachers by the way, that’s what reminded me of his post. It’s hard to summarise his writings, of which there are two, you just need to make some time to process it all. Broja has just been taken off by the way on 70 minutes with no returns. Disapointment.

Madres paralelas (the script) - available here.

Pedro Almodóvar again pens his thoughts at the end of the script. The first of which is about madres e hijas.

Other books for further reading:

Almodóvar y la cultura by Mario de la Torre-Espinosa

Almodóvar on Almodóvar by Frederic Strauss.

A Spanish Labyrinth by Mark Allinson.

Grammar/structures and vocabulary in edition 80:

• Adjectival agreement

• Reflexive verbs

• Present tense

• Indirect object pronoun

• Direct object pronoun

• The personal a

• Preterite tense

• The present perfect

• Convertirse - to become

• Se acerca - looms

• Asumir la responsibilidad - To step up to the mark

• Sino - but rather

On Tuesday we return to school after half-term and my year 12s will start on essay number 2. This edition will be their homework on the first week back. If you’ve got this far then I hope you find it useful for your students!

Download here.

Buy me a coffee here.

Ollie :)

This week’s Boletín will serve as an AO4 booster for those studying La Casa de Bernarda Alba.

A belated happy New Year!

Late January I had a wave of inspiration and combined with my wife spent days working soley on the image at the top of this weeks Boletín. So 31st January at 10pm I was illustrating a peace lily. Sad, I know. It was a learning curve with an app called Procreate and it took a long time to achieve the end result. I hope you like it! Skip to the bottom to watch a timelapse of our work. For the first time I wrote all the articles myself so this is a small milestone! Thank you to @nunubelle76 for proofreading this one.

This week’s Boletín will serve as an AO4 booster for those studying La Casa de Bernarda Alba. Edition 44, released long before I used Substack, featured articles on Lorca’s siding with the poor, the real life Frasquita Alba who was the inspiration for Bernarda and Lorca’s social sensibility. In this edition 74 the articles are on la tradición del noviazgo, los hogares multigeneracionales and eI luto riguroso.

I’ve also partly made this to advertise my classroom lending library to my year 13s and provide some interesting stories gleaned from reading around the topic of Spain and Lorca. Doing this would provide opportunities for students to frame LCDBA in the context of Andalucía in the 30s. Maybe just maybe some of what they read will make it’s way into a year 13 essay! What follows is a short summary of each book from the image below. I hope you find something worth reading more about, feel free to suggest any other books you consider recommended reading on the topic. If you are a student reading this, as I know some of you are (thanks by the way) then read the summaries below, pick a book to read and invest in yourself.

Books

Ghosts of Spain - buy from Amazon

On my PGCE I was assigned a project to increase my subject knowledge on an aspect of the Spanish speaking world which I thought needed work. I knew nothing about the Civil War so Ghosts of Spain was the first book I read on the topic. Giles Tremlett, a journalist, embarks on a journey to find out more about Spain’s dark past. It is well-informed account of Spain today.

People of the Sierra - buy here from Amazon

Just beaten by South from Granada to the number one spot. J. A. Pitt-Rivers was a social anthropologist who conducted research into the values, social structure, lifestyle and norms of a typical Spanish pueblo. The result is a fascinating book with acute observations made on relationships, friendship, courting, politics, community life and much more. This book could have been written in the pueblo where Bernarda Alba lives and so provides the perfect contextual backdrop to Lorca’s “photographic documentary”. Get this book!

Conciencia Social en las tres dramas rurales de García Lorca - listed here

I picked this up from a site I have found many hidden gems on (Todocoleccion.net). This 39-page booklet was published by University of Granada in 1981. It addresses Lorca’s social sensibility in Yerma, Bodas de Sangre and LCDBA. There are only two copies left on todocoleccion so be quick if you want one!

Trienta y una entrevistas a García Lorca - buy here from Amazon

This is a fascinating book. A compilation of interviews with Lorca which are transcribed verbatim and sorted into topics.

South from Granada - buy here from Amazon

Maybe my favourite book on the topic. Gerald Brenan moves to a small town in Las Alpujarras and documents his experiences. In a rather amusing section he locks eyes with a woman observing him from her window and a courtship ensues. This book is highly readable for anybody interested in Spain, it’s less of a social anthropological work like People of the Sierra and more of a documentation of the goings on in town by an interested and informed observer. I have read this maybe three times and will read it again soon, I sometimes start my LCDBA lessons with readings from this book. A classic.

Lorca: el poeta y su pueblo - listed here

Quite specialist. Maybe you’ve wondered why Lorca was held in such high regard by the working classes, peasants and gypsies in Spain? Or to what extent he represented through his poetry and plays the people of Spain and how in touch was he with the normal Spaniard and social/economic/political situation of the time? To be fair you probably haven’t asked yourself these questions but if you want to know more then it’s worth a read. There are only four copies of this left on todocoleccion.net but it isn’t cheap.

The Face of Spain - buy here from Amazon

(Description taken from Amazon) Gerald Brenan returned to Spain in 1949 for the first time since the Civil War. He was determined to see what had become of the country he loved, to speak to ordinary people and to experience life in small towns unvisited by foreigners. He had earlier lived in a remote village in the Sierra Nevada — now he returned to a land in the grip of famine where guerrilleros roamed the mountains and thousands of people were reduced to living in caves.

Bodas de sangre - buy here from Amazon

One of Lorca’s three tragic plays along with Yerma and LCDBA. In Bodas de Sangre there is love, death, an arranged marriage, rural tradition and tragedy. Lorca uses clear symbolism in this play of only 85 pages.

Yerma - buy here from Amazon

(Description taken from Amazon as I couldn’t have said it better) One of three tragic plays about peasants and rural life that make up Lorca’s ‘rural trilogy’. It is possibly Lorca’s harshest play following a woman’s Herculean struggle against the curse of infertility. The woman’s barrenness becomes a metaphor for her marriage in a traditional society that denies women sexual or social equality. Her desperate desire for a child drives her to commit a terrible crime at the end of the play.

The Spanish Labyrinth - buy here from Amazon

This book, I believe, was banned under the Franco dictatorship. I read it over the course of a year as it packs a punch. Gerald Brenan was a highly-acclaimed hispanist and in this book he unravels the social and political background of Spain before the Spanish Civil War. There are large chapters on the conditions of the working class, the Republic, the dictatorship and all the factions involved. This is complex stuff, what were the differences between anarchists, socialists, marxists and communists? Reading this is a challenge but will help paint a picture of rural working life in a town not dissimiliar from the one Bernarda and her daughters live in. I actually made a resource for this here.

Guerra - buy here from Amazon

Great reading to build knowledge of modern Spain’s attitude to the war which is a divisive taboo subject. Having moved to Spain and discovered a mass grave from the war practically on his doorstep Jason Webster undertakes a journey to find out more about the Spanish Civil War. Jason Webster has written several books on Spain all of which are highly readable and entertaining.

Federico García Lorca - A Life - buy here from Amazon

This is written by Ian Gibson, a hispanist, who is considered the gold standard when it comes to all things Lorca. This biography covers Lorca’s upbringing, formative years and national/international recognition. Gibson explores Lorca’s politics, works, travels, education and death.

Vida y muerte de Federico García Lorca - buy here from Amazon

I love this book. If you don’t fancy reading the biography by Ian Gibson you can pick this 100-page graphic novel up. Lorca’s story is told and the illustrations are beautiful. All the key information is there and it’s more digestible than Ian Gibson’s 600-page tome.

Death rituals in early 20th century Andalusia - read for free here

This is the the most recent secondary reading I’ve done on LCDBA and I found this thesis very enlightening. The author, a social anthropologist, explores the various stages of the death/mourning process with reference to LCDBA. I found the references to wearing black, praying, limiting behaviour and not leaving the house very applicable to any appreciation of the veracity of LCDBA. I discovered that bell tolls signify that somebody has just died and learnt that although 8 years of mourning is severe, 5 years was quite common and for a widow the mourning could last the rest of his/her life. The conventional norms for mourning were more severe for women and it was common for men to bend these rules.

Structures to explore in edition 74:

1. The preterite tense

2. The imperfect tense

3. Definite articles

4. Ser/estar

5. Direct Object Pronouns

Vocabulary to be aware of in edition 74:

1. Darse cuenta - To realise

2. De primera mano - First-hand

3. Cortejar - To court

4. Sin vergüenza - Shameless

5. El luto - Mourning

6. Rezar el rosario - To pray the rosary

If you’ve made it this far then thanks for reading. Most Boletín issues take 3 hours or so to make. This edition has taken about 12 hours+ factoring in research, reading, illustrating, the writing of the articles and this Revue issue. Added to that is the fact my wife helped me in her own free time! Please consider buying us a coffee so we can keep it up! A Volver edition will follow along the same lines in the future which I’m looking forward to makin

Download edition 74 here.

All the best,

Ollie