Spanish Culture and History of Spain

1 Week Course in Vélez-Málaga, Spain.

Spanish Culture and History of Spain

Course Description:

Founded by the Phoenicians in the 8th century BC. Gadir (Cadiz) is the oldest city in Europe. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians along with Iberians, Celts, and Tartessians all left their track during Antiquity in the Iberian Peninsula, making this part of Europe one of the most important centers of the Mediterranean classical civilization. Learn about Spanish Culture and History of Spain

They were followed by Visigoths, Vandals, Swabians, Jews, Arabs, and Berbers, starting the Middle Age, being Al-Andalus the big star of this historical period.

Al-Andalus along with Cordoba as its capital city became the greatest civilizational cultural space of Europe for nearly a thousand years.

After the creation and development of the Northern kingdoms and the union in a single crown of Spain, Spanish ships raised the first great globalization of the Modern Age, discovering a new world, new lands, cultures, ideas, trade routes that reached China and India and let the arrival of products like tomatoes, potatoes, corn or the profusion of spices, and the Spanish discovery of chocolate.

Course Overview

As long as the art, the language, and Spanish culture were sown throughout America and even Oceania through innumerable cities and universities, a new civilization was raised with universal aspiration: the Hispanidad, a worldview that expresses itself through a common language shared by more than 500 million people around the world.

Spain, and particularly Andalusia, is one of the regions with the greatest artistic and heritage in the world. Few countries have such great an intercultural abundance of artistic diversity as Spain, where have taken place all the different European artistic movements: Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, and the breaking of the avant-gardes with the master Picasso at the head from his hometown: Malaga, capital of Andalusian tourism with some of the most important museums of the whole Mediterranean coast.

The Spanish unique historical singularity of Al-Andalus in the Middle Ages created a meeting polt where different religions, influences, trends, ethnic groups, languages, cultures converged. Explore yourself the secrets of the Alhambra of Granada, the Royal Alcázares, the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, the mysteries of Ubeda, Ronda, and Baeza, and discover with us the mysteries of the streets and monuments of Vélez-Málaga where every wall enclose its own legends and secrets.

Methods: Digital explanation, Storytelling, Project-Based Learning, Socratic dialogue.

Activities: Local excursion: Vélez-Málaga a journey in History.

Concepts:

• Iberians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Tartessians, and Romans.
• Al-Andalus: a crossroad of civilizations.
• America and Spain: the first globalization.
• Spain and Hispanic culture in the Contemporary world.
• Spanish Romanic Art.
• Arts of Al-Andalus.
• Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque in Spain.
• Goya and Neoclassicism.
• Avant-garde and Cubism: Picasso.

Objectives:

• Know the main traces of Spanish history and the Hispanic world.
• Discover the Hispanic world and its rich culture.
• Avoid the false historical myths and stereotypes about Spain or Hispanic culture.
• Analyze the richness of Spanish cultural heritage.
• Know the main traces of Spanish periods of Art.
• Discover the most iconic masterpiece of Spanish Art.
• Understand the greatest masters of Spanish Art.