Boletín 95 - Los barceloneses, Héctor Bellerín y la desconfianza política.

Welcome to edition 95!

One of my KS5 students, a very happy Arsenal fan (as of 15/10/22) who has been giving me stick since year 7, should appreciate this edition. For as much as it pains me to say, being a Spurs fan, I think Héctor Bellerín (ex Arsenal now Barcelona) is a class act.

Bellerín has been on my future boletín ideas list a while and today I get to tick him off.

Credit to my wife for the drawing even though she only did they eyes.

In Wales the topic of la influencia de los ídolos doesn’t really get a look in but if it did then Bellerín would near the top of my list. He’s somebody a lot of young people can look up to for various reasons. Bellerín is a 27, a Spanish attack minded defender, well-known in the UK and Spain, has 4 million followers on Instagram, he models, designs, is committed to veganism and environmentalism, has his finger on the pulse with politics/social issues and currently plays his football at Barcelona. He said this about social media in a recent interview:

El verano pasado estuve 6 meses sin redes sociales, borré todas las aplicaciones del teléfono, pero mis perfiles seguían activos, yo no los utilizaba. Pasé el mejor verano de mi vida.

With the media training elite athletes recieve nowadays it’s rare that a high-profile footballer will speak openly about pretty much anything which makes Bellerín stand out as he speaks openly about pretty much everything. He also has a mullet and a moustache so you know, a pretty trendy guy all round.

With the Hector Bellerin appreciation done and dusted the remaining articles are about youngsters living in Barcelona and Catalan language use and distrust in politics.

Last week year 12 finished watching Volver and spent an enjoyable lesson reordering 47 printscreens of scenes and then matching up scene descriptions with the images, did some topic work on social media and brushed up on reflexive verbs. Each text this week then has a reflexive/pronominal verb for them to find.

Grammar to look out for

• Past participles working as adjectives

• Adjectival agreement

• The imperfect tense

• The present tense

• The present perfect

• Reflexive verbs

• Comparative phrases

• The preterite tense (regulars/irregulars)

• Superlatives

• Direct object pronouns

• Definite articles

• Indefinite articles

Thanks to Thais for helping proofread the translations!

Download edition 95 here and if you’re feeling generous buy me a beer here.

Ollie :)