25th Anniversary Special Workshops

At Cervantes International School we are celebrating our anniversary. On our 25th birthday, we look back and our memory is filled with faces and more faces. Although we can’ t put a name to all of them, we do remember the enthusiasm and dedication with which many of our students first came into contact with the language of Cervantes or simply decided to improve their knowledge.

To mark this 25th Anniversary we are going to carry out a series of workshops through 2011, and all of our students will be able to attend if they so wish. The workshops will be offered in the afternoon and there will be one every week.
There is a total of 8 workshops, so they will be repeated every 8 weeks.

Below you can find more information about these workshops and their contents:

Programme

• 1. Short stories workshop. Stories that make us think
  The short stories workshop is a place where Latin American writers have created characters, voices, sceneries… A place to create, to invent, a space for writing. We will discuss the meaning of the stories and their morals and we will learn about storytelling techniques.
  We will listen to short fables from the voice of the writer himself and, through them, we will travel to the wonderful world of dreams, of utopias, of fantasy, of illusion, all in all, to the world of magic.
• 2. 1939-1975, 36 years under the rule of Franco
  We will look at one of the darkest periods of our history, analysing the effects that these nearly 40 years of dictatorship have had on our country and its inhabitants..
  We will get closer to the figure of Franco through an entertaining presentation and we will see how life was in the Spain of the dictatorship.
  We will work with real texts from the time and, with the help of a film based on real facts and thoroughly documented, we will travel back in time and study today’s and yesterday’s Spain.
• 3. Holding hands with Neruda
  Although his real name was Ricardo Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, he remains in everyone’s memory as Pablo Neruda, the poet who could write both the most beautiful love verses and the most accusing manifestos aimed at all those who wanted to turn his native Chile into a place of oppression.
  Writer, politician, diplomat, Literature Nobel Prize winner, Honorary Doctor of Oxford University, he is considered one of the great poets of the 20th century. 
• 4. Avant Garde and Innovation: The Generation of ‘27
  We will immerse ourselves in one of the most important generations of the Spanish literature and in the innovations of the Avant Garde. We will focus on the most relevant figures among this group of writers: Pedro Salinas, Luis Cernuda, García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Miguel Hernández…
• 5. Life, death and passion: Lorca
  Perhaps this poet and playwright is one of the best know authors of Spanish and world literature. We will study some of his best known works and we will read together some of his most important poems.
  Lorca joins popular and high culture to sing to the persecuted gipsy people, to marginal characters marked by their tragic destinies.
  We will walk hand in hand with the author through entertaining presentations and a film which accurately reflects his life and work.
• 6. Art and Provocation: Almodóvar
  Almodovar´s cinema normally reflects a marginal reality, that of the lowest echelons of society. Scandalous and provocative elements are abundant: corrupt policemen, drug use, abuse, prostitution, precocious children, desperate housewives, homosexuality…but without ever renouncing his peculiar sense of humour.
  We will take a tour through his films.
• 7. Decadence, tradition and Spanish feeling: The Generation of ’98
  This is the umbrella under which a group of  Spanish writers, essayists and poets who were deeply influenced by the moral, political and social crisis due to the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines as Spanish territory are gathered.
  We will focus on this group’s most representative authors (Baroja, Antonio Machado, Valle-Inclán…) and we will get to know them through their writings.
• 8. Under Picasso’s Paintbrush
  By taking a look at his main works, we will study his personality and how it is reflected in his paintings.
  Under Picasso’s Paintbrush is a workshop dedicated to the most international of Malagan painters.
  Throughout the workshop we will get to know his pictorial stages, his Malagan and international biography and most of all, his Andalusian inspiration.