Category Archives: Spanish cultura

Salud from Sherryland!

English Heritage, Hispanic Heritage, Spain, Spanish cultura, Spanish Food, Spanish travelling, Spanish wine, Uncategorised, ,

        

Just back from Cadiz, Spain, the area where sherry is produced. What a privilege to take some of our Spanish students on this cultural immersion. A joy for the wine lovers, history lovers and culture lovers

Sherry, we called it Jerez in Spain is a fortified wine only produced in this part of Spain, the Sherry triangle, and covers the towns of Jerez de la Frontera, Puerto de SantaMaria & Sanlucar de Barrameda.

This time we stayed in a lovely converted convent, Monasterio de San Miguel in Puerto de Santa Maria. A place full history, this is an excellent base to explore the area.

To learn more about sherry visiting a couple of bodegas is a must. To really appreciate it, one has to taste the different wines, fino, oloroso, Pedro Ximenez just to mention a few, as well as my favourite one, Palo cortado.

This area of Spain is well known for their Andalusian horses. A horse riding performance is only possible to watch in Jerez and Vienna. We did not only go to a performance but went on a “calesa” (carriage) ride.

Cadiz, claimed to be the oldest city in Western Europe, was reached by ferry from El Puerto.

A culture pot, Founded by the Phoenicians, every other civilisation helped to shape this city full of character, light, sun and welcoming people.

In Sevilla with our fantastic guides Emma and Aidan we moved to the times of Jews and Moors living together. At Los Reales Alcazares palace Christian traditions and Moorish architecture get put together. This mixture of cultures could be found in a lot of aspects of Spanish life, and a good example is in the Spanish cuisine that we sampled on numerous occasions.

What a fantastic experience! Thank you everyone for making this trip so special!!

Spanish Fiesta, Feria de abril 2015

Flamenco Sevillanas, Hispanic Heritage, multicultural Bedford, Spanish cultura,

Everything started a year ago…While we were in one of our enrichment activities in Spain our group of students asked for flamenco lessons back in Bedford!

Sevillanas workshop in Madrid June 2014
Sevillanas workshop in Madrid June 2014

Back home we contacted Claire, La Fresa Flamenca, and since then two groups of students have learnt this type of Spanish dance.

Last Saturday night, as a grand finale we offered a “ palma”workshop with tapas and paella. In this workshop we learnt different   Spanish rhythms and after that we all danced sevillanas, that is a dance from Seville, in the South of Spain.

We had Timothy Pearson, our guitarist, and Claire Astbury, our flamenco teacher. Everyone had a fantastic time!

Thank you to everyone who made this happened!

Katharine of Aragon talk by Alison Weir

There were 25 of us who went to the talk about Katharine of Aragon given by Alison Weir.tumba ca

I was not sure what  to expect as Katharine has always seen the cause of religious separation from the Catholic world in England. Having heard a lot about Alison Weir but having never read her books, nor followed her on the media, I knew only that she was a well-known English historian.

What a talk!

Alison’s narration and story-telling techniques, as well as her deep knowledge about the early Tudor times transported us to the times of Kathari ne of Aragon. We learnt how tough this Spanish lady was and how ruthless Henry VIII was to her. She did not manage to meet her only living child, Mary, for the last years of her life.

Alison WeirKatharine knew her role in life, and in her last letter to her husband, written on her death-bed, she wrote, Dear husband, and signed it, the Queen of England. http://englishhistory.net/tudor/letter5.html

Alison is very erudite on the subject of Henry VIII and her way of presenting the topic made me realise how much more I would like to learn about Katharine of Aragon. We are thinking of organising a tour where Alison can tell us more. Thank you to everyone who came on the trip and shared this experience with us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Multilingual carols workshop

Singing is a great way to learn a language and to meet others.


Working with María Fernandez Toro was such a joy and enrichment for everyone. Maria did a fantastic job with 28 of us and we sung in French, Italian, German, Spanish and English. Some of us were monolingual and very amateur singers, but we all were willing to try new things and the group worked very well.

Maria explained the meaning of the words and gave us directions about how to make sounds in different languages. So by the end of the two days workshop we felt far more confortable about singing in a different language. Please find few of our multilingual songs at our you tube channel.