Spanish Papers

This paper offers you a thorough grounding in Spanish grammar and vocabulary, starting at basic and taking you to intermediate level. As well as giving you the foundations for the literature, linguistics and translation work required by your course, the SPA1 paper equips you with the communicative resources to handle every day situations in Spanish, both orally and in writing. This includes writing and speaking on topics of general interest.

The paper aims to take you to a level of linguistic ability roughly matching that of an A-Level qualification. This corresponds to level B1 as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

This is an ambitious goal, and our ab initio students achieve it year after year. The course is intense, but all the teaching staff are committed to making the course an exciting and rewarding experience for you. Your teacher and supervisors will be there to offer all the support you may need.

SpA2 comprises two elements which are taught and assessed separately, but the marks for which are combined to create one mark at the end of the year: Translation from Spanish to English (worth 66.6%) and Oral exam (worth 33.3%). Both of these skills form part of the fast-paced and exciting ab initio Spanish course.

Translation work will support the language acquisition skills acquired in SpA1; extracts from literary and essayistic works allow you to see complex grammar in action, encounter new vocabulary and explore differences in language use and style. The texts you encounter will increase your knowledge of Hispanic culture. The course will also help you gain an understanding of translation as process and product.

The SPA3 texts for study are Iciar Bollaín's También la lluvia (film), Emilia Pardo Bazán's Cuentos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's A Sor Juana Anthology (ed. Trueblood) and Federico García Lorca's Romancero gitano.

These texts are a subset of those taught in Sp1, the Post-A level paper for Part IA students (Option B). Students enrolled in SPA3 are encouraged to attend the SP1 lectures on the texts to bolster their knowledge of Hispanophone literature and linguistics.

This paper aims to help you consolidate and develop your command of Spanish in all four skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening), with a particular focus on advanced grammar and writing skills. The paper builds upon your prior knowledge of the language, acquired in your A-Level (or equivalent) course or in the Cambridge ab initio course.

The aim of the translation element of this course is to expand your reading experience and to develop translation skills while introducing you to the wide range of styles and registers in Spanish from the Golden Age to the present day and from Europe through to Latin America.

Paper B3 is made up of two distinct components: Translation into Spanish and Spanish through the Media (MD). Together, the B3 Translation and MD elements will help you develop your linguistic skills and cultural competence in a range of areas. 

The B3 paper is only available to Part IB (i.e., second-year students) who had an A-level or equivalent in the language when they arrived. In addition, if your other language is ab initio, you can choose not to do this paper in Spanish and instead do an extra literature/linguistics paper from the schedule of IB papers. If, however, both your languages are post A-level, then this paper (both components) is compulsory.

In this paper you will be translating from Spanish into English and from English into Spanish. You will work with literary as well as some non-technical non fiction passages. The class offers you an opportunity to reflect on your translation practice and to improve your understanding of translation problems and your ability to tackle them successfully.

This paper offers you the opportunity to engage with advanced use of the foreign language in stimulating and intellectually challenging ways, through the analysis of texts of various types and genres under the topic of Identity.

Students will be expected to engage critically with relevant texts, placing them in their cultural contexts and analysing their content and formal features through written work in the foreign language. 

This paper offers you the opportunity to explore the notion of Identity in the Hispanic world from a number of different perspectives. You will work on a range of texts and audiovisual material (articles from the press, academic papers, blogs, film, TV series), analysing the ideas they put forward as well as their formal properties (text structure, tone, rhetorical devices, etc.). In class, you will have an opportunity to share your ideas with others through guided discussion. Much of class time will be devoted to discussing and analysing the content of the texts or clips. At this level we expect you to have a good grounding in grammar, and this course does not have a grammar syllabus as such. However, we will work on consolidating and enhancing your command of Spanish through practice in advanced writing skills.

SP1 is designed to give you an introduction to the main areas of study in the Spanish Tripos, allowing you to sample literature, linguistics and film, from Medieval to contemporary periods, and from Spain to Latin America. The paper allows you to work on a variety of texts and topics that will give you solid grounding in Hispanic studies whilst making you aware of its richness and complexity. Furthermore SP1 offers you the chance to gain a good grasp of theoretical tools in literature, film and linguistics which will enable you to work in depth with this material while gaining a wider perspective on Hispanic culture. It is available to Part IA post-A-level or equivalent students (Option B) only.

You are strongly encouraged to read as many texts as possible from the reading list over the summer vacation. While supervision itineraries may vary from college to college, all Sp1 students will be asked to prepare material from each section of the paper.

The study of the Iberian Middle Ages and Spanish early modern period is fundamental to the understanding of modern Spain and its culture. These eras were times of intense political and religious upheaval, yet they fostered a rich, vibrant literary and artistic culture unique in Europe. Historically the peninsula was a site of successive waves of invasion and colonization so that its cultural substrata encompass pagan, Christian, Judaic, and Islamic influences. As a result medieval Hispanic culture is diverse and distinctive in its mixture of Islamic, Hebraic and Christian elements.

After the fall of the Islamic state of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, the Castilian language became dominant, the Spanish state had cemented its power, and the themes and ideals that were to shape later Spanish literature and thought had taken root. At this point, Spain developed the largest and most important Empire in the Early Modern period, and was poised at a dynamic moment when it was simultaneously at the height of its power and already on the brink of decline. Across the Atlantic, the conquest of Mexico brought the cultural and political complexity of the Iberian world into contact and conflict with diverse indigenous societies.

Students will acquire a sound knowledge of the literature, art, social and political history of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period in the Spanish peninsula, enabling them to understand key concerns of this era within the unique context of the multicultural society of medieval Spain. One topic focuses on medieval culture (War and the Hero), two topics address central early modern preoccupations with love and the demonic (The Great Romance & Playing the Devil), and introduce students to the richness and variety of expression of those themes through important literary and dramatic texts. The fourth topic will introduce students to the representation of members of the three faiths (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) in the medieval and early Modern periods and give a historical overview of their relationships through an exploration of convivencia (lit. living-togetherness).

Finally, in the transatlantic component of this paper, students will develop a nuanced understanding of the construction of colonial Latin American narratives by analyzing indigenous and European perspectives on a single historical event (Writing the Conquest of Mexico). Students should note that SP3 also provides excellent preparation for the Part II Medieval (SP14) and Early Modern (SP7) papers.

SP4 offers an overview of Spanish culture from the late eighteenth century to the present. Each of the paper’s thematic units will situate a range of cultural production—literature, cinema, visual materials (painting, etchings, cartoons, photography), and state legislation—within its cultural, social, and political contexts. Deploying a patently historical focus, SP4 will require students to develop knowledge of major events and central figures in modern Spanish culture while considering artistic representation as an index of the times in which these artists lived and worked. While the historical component of the paper will be emphasized in lectures, seminars, and supervisions, students will be required to engage a number of intersecting fields (literary studies, cultural studies, and cinema studies) over the course of the academic year.

The countries of Latin America are as rich and varied in their culture and historical development as they are in their geography and in the mix of peoples that inhabit them. In this second-year paper we offer a snapshot of that rich culture and its turbulent histories, giving you an introduction to some of the most salient and exciting facets of Hispanophone Latin American culture. These include some of the earliest Amerindian and European accounts of the region from the time of the Spanish Conquest, the problems surrounding nation building from the early years of independence from Spain, the persistence of racism and other forms of social exclusion, revolution in Haiti and Mexico, and dictatorship in the Southern Cone and Central America. We also explore some of the competing imaginations of urban culture in the twentieth century as these take form in literature and film in profoundly different regional contexts. Finally, we take you through the metafictional labyrinths spun by internationally-renowned authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez and others. You are encouraged to read around the history covered in each topic, although the primary emphasis of the paper is cultural (including literature, cinema, and visual arts). You are expected to read texts comparatively, and you are encouraged to relate them to their historical, social and intellectual context.

History is not taught as a separate component, but for many of the topics you are encouraged to set culture within its historical context, and relevant historical background will be given in lectures. Some questions which can be answered with historical methodology: please consult your supervisor if this is of interest to you.

This paper aims to offer to 2nd year MML students the opportunity to acquaint themselves with Catalan, a language of over ten million speakers on the North Eastern seaboard of Spain, South Eastern France, the Balearic Islands and a city in Sardinia. The course at 1B acts as a feeder for the final-year paper, Sp10, which offers more intensive study of the language, literature and cultures of the Catalan-speaking areas.

Students who want to take this paper do not have to have any prior knowledge of Catalan, although some knowledge of a cognate Romance idiom, especially Spanish, Portuguese or Italian is an advantage. Candidates can also familiarise themselves with the language of Catalonia before the course starts through online materials below. Like other beginners’ courses in MML, the teaching strategy will be fully communicative, inviting active participation in the eliciting of all four language skills. An introduction to Catalan literature is provided by the study of two literary works (translations into English are available) by prominent female authors. Sp6 students are expected to achieve a similar standard, that of A-level, as is the case with other ab initio students. The teaching will also prepare candidates for the Certificat Internacional de Català Nivell B1 awarded each year by the Institut Ramon Llull and thw Generalitat de Catalunya.

This course considers the internal and external history of the Hispanic languages. The focus is mainly on the development of Portuguese, Castilian and Catalan but other Peninsular varieties (including those usually termed 'dialects') are also considered since the history of all the Peninsular languages is in any case interrelated.

The history of the Hispanic languages stretches from Vulgar Latin (which may conveniently be thought of as the spoken language of the Roman Empire) to the expansion of Spain and Portugal into the New World and the perceptible present-day developments which are taking place in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world of over 400 million people. The fascination of the subject lies in the piecing together of information about the emergence of early Hispanic languages out of Latin; the language in the Dark Ages and the Medieval period; the examination of possible reasons why the language changed as it did (actually not just once but all the time!); the processes of language change; and the study of modern diversity. Students will also get the opportunity to acquire a hands-on experience of the past forms of the language, and of general philological methodology, through the study of old texts during supervisions.

A prior knowledge of Latin is a help, but is neither essential nor expected. However, some knowledge of linguistics is required (SP1 and/or PG1 linguistics lectures).

Velázquez’s Venus invites the viewer to look into the mirror in order to solve her riddles. The tensions of the image are those of its time —the early modern period ushered in an innovative poetic language with ancient roots, the possibility of redemption or perdition through a New World, and a dramatic and visual culture that stimulates the imagination of the spectator. This paper covers the period known as Hispanic Golden Age (16th and 17th centuries), a moment of cultural change and imperial expansion, of political contrasts and paradoxes. The ‘discovery’ and invasion of America, the Reformation, the rise of philosophical skepticism and the spread of Copernicus’ heliocentric theses changed dramatically the way in which the world was understood. This is clearly reflected and interrogated in literature and the arts, with the development of the Renaissance and then of the Baroque, leading to some of the most revolutionary early modern works, ranging from the surreal burlesque poetry of Quevedo and Caviedes, the cynical and parodic picaresque novel, the first European descriptions of the New World by Christopher Columbus and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, collaborative pictographic accounts of the Aztecs made by indigenous artists and Spanish friars, Cervantes’s hybrid and ‘postmodern’ Don Quijote, Góngora’s challenging Soledades, imitated by Sor Juana in her Primero sueño, the irreverent plays of Lope, Tirso and Calderón, the mestizo historiography of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and the multilayered approach to the representation of reality in the paintings of Velázquez and Valdés Leal. By exploring the works of these artists and thinkers we will engage with ideas and questions that, centuries later, are still our own. And, perhaps, we will be able to decipher the mystery that lies beyond Venus’s enigmatic gaze. 

Sp9 paper covers more than a century of literature, film, and art produced not only in Spain, and in Spanish, but also in other languages of the Spanish state that extend beyond its physical borders in relation to Spain’s colonial holdings. Students who completed SP4 in Part IB will find a wealth of new material and ideas to explore. Those who have not followed Iberian-centered courses in the past will encounter a rich variety of cultures from the late nineteenth century to the present. The material is grouped into four broad topics which allow students to approach varied artistic, cultural, historical, and political questions.  The topics are porous, meaning that texts from any given topic are often relevant to other topics.  Students should therefore feel free to explore alternative connections and combinations as they prepare for the written exam.

This hybrid paper aims to provide the students with a comprehensive knowledge of Catalan cultures and Catalan language.

The cultural part of Sp10 offers an extensive introduction to the literature and culture of Catalonia and other Catalan-speaking regions and countries, most notably Valencia and the Balearic Islands. Consisting of fourteen lectures (combined with the supervisions), this course will examine major tendencies in literature, architecture, sociolinguistics, politics, history, film and the visual arts.

The paper is divided into three cultural sections, ordered chronologically. The first is devoted to the “re-birth”, consolidation and diversification of linguistic, cultural and national consciousness from the romantically inflected Renaixença to the internationally orientated Avant-Garde (c.1833-1936), with an emphasis on poetry, linguistic politics, urban planning, architecture, painting, photography and World’s Fairs. The second period focuses on cultural production during the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975), with special attention to literature and film. The final section addresses questions of constitutional democracy, postmodernism and globalism, with reference to cinema, theatre, poetry and prose fiction.

The language part will provide two weekly advanced language classes that will prepare the students to obtain a B2/C1 level in Catalan. The aim of the language component of the SP10 paper is to equip students as proficient users of the Catalan language, able to understand a wide range of demanding, long texts, and recognise implicit meaning. Students will be able to express themselves fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions, as well as to use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic, and professional purposes. As for the written language, students will work on their skills to produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors, and cohesive devices.

This course considers the internal and external history of the Hispanic languages. The focus is mainly on the development of Portuguese, Castilian and Catalan but other Peninsular varieties (including those usually termed 'dialects') are also considered since the history of all the Peninsular languages is in any case interrelated.

The history of the Hispanic languages stretches from Vulgar Latin (which may conveniently be thought of as the spoken language of the Roman Empire) to the expansion of Spain and Portugal into the New World and the perceptible present-day developments which are taking place in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world of over 400 million people. The fascination of the subject lies in the piecing together of information about the emergence of early Hispanic languages out of Latin; the language in the Dark Ages and the Medieval period; the examination of possible reasons why the language changed as it did (actually not just once but all the time!); the processes of language change; and the study of modern diversity. Students will also get the opportunity to acquire a hands-on experience of the past forms of the language, and of general philological methodology, through the study of old texts during supervisions.

A prior knowledge of Latin is a help, but is neither essential nor expected. However, some knowledge of linguistics is required (SP1 and/or PG1 linguistics lectures).

This paper looks at Latin American literature and culture from its inception up to the twentieth century. It ranges from the culture of the Spanish Colony in the Americas (sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries), through post-Independence Latin American culture, up to the famous 'Boom' of the 1960s (the cutoff point for the paper is around 1973, the date of the Chilean coup, which represents the start of the Post-Boom covered in SP13). From the academic year 2025-26, the two sections of the paper will be Section A: Poetry, and Section B: Topics in Latin American Culture (which includes two topics on the colonial period). The topics allow for wide comparative reading across regions, genres and authors (including novelists, poets and visual artists). The exam format has recently changed, and will be going back to a three-hour in-person format for Tripos 2026. Over the centuries the area has produced many major poets, which are fundamental to a grasp of the culture, as reflected in the structure of the paper.

This paper gives you the opportunity to study Latin American literature, film, art and photography from the 1970s to the present day.

The paper is organized into a series of topics, authors, film directors and artists aiming to give you in-depth insight into the way culture has responded to profound social and cultural changes throughout the region.

Twelve comparative topics allow for study of issues such as the appeal to the testimonio genre by subaltern subjects as a means of challenging the elite's hegemony over writing systems since Conquest, the neo-baroque urban chronicles of queer artists and writers like Néstor Perlongher and Pedro Lemebel, the filmic culture of the megacity, the return to the land and rethinking of human-animal relations in postmodern eco-fiction, the appeal to the neo-noir detective fiction format as a means to making sense of criminal subcultures emergning in a context of neoliberal globalization, or questions of witnessing and memory in contemporary art. In the section on individual authors you can look in depth at the experimental narratives of Manuel Puig, with their reworking of mass forms, at the hallucinatory prose of Diamela Eltit and Roberto Bolaño as they revisit the ongoing effects of Pinochet's military dictatorship in Chile, the meta-testimonios of Laura Restrepo as they explore new commonalities between subaltern protest and 'escritura femenina', and at the multi-layered installations of internationally renowned Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, among others.

Although the main focus of the paper is on Spanish-language works, you are welcome to explore Brazilian culture comparatively in answers to the ‘topic’ questions.

There are no prerequisites for studying SP13, although it leads on well (without overlap) from Part IB Latin American Culture (SP5), and makes an interesting sister paper for those who wish to take Part II Latin American Culture paper SP12. 

The Spanish Middle Ages is a fascinating and rewarding period for study. Historically the peninsula was a site of successive waves of invasion and colonization so that its cultural substrata encompass pagan, Christian, Judaic and Islamic influences. Consequently, medieval Hispanic cultural is unique and diverse. During this period Castilian came to dominate, the Spanish state started to take shape, and the themes and ideals that were to form later Spanish literature and thought originated.

The paper offers a comparativist exploration of Iberian and Latin American cinemas, from the so-called silent period to the present day. Organized in terms of key topics, it examines important filmmaking traditions, movements and debates that have emerged in the Ibero-American context and helped to shape it. This organization provides students with a critical and theoretical knowledge of reading different film making forms, such as avant-garde films, indigenous texts, popular cinema and transnational filmmaking, while also allowing them the tremendous possibility for transcending traditional local, national and linguistic divisions in order to pose broader comparative questions. In doing so the paper’s structure reconfigures the traditional metropole-colony dichotomy into a more nuanced and multipolar interpretive frame. At the same time, individual lectures will situate films in their social, political, historical and cultural context, thereby highlighting the specificity, locatedness and historicity of cinematic production and reception, including in certain instances their relationship to state institutions. The course will thus provide students with ways of critically understanding the connectivities and dissimilarities of the cinematic culture of the Ibero-American world. Films will be viewed in their original versions with English subtitles.