Curious about studying Spanish and Portuguese - BA (Hons)at UCL (University College London)? We've gathered all the key details—entry requirements, modules, fees, and more. Hear from real students by checking out reviews, or take the next step by booking an open day to explore it for yourself.
Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) - BA (Hons)
UCL (University College London) - Bloomsbury Campus
Full Time
Sep 2027
4 Year
Our Spanish and Portuguese degree offers huge scope for developing in-depth, comparative and intercultural approaches to the humanities. You will be able to choose from a wide range of modules including literature, linguistic traditions, history, sociology, philosophy, art, film or other aspects of the cultures associated with the language you'll be learning. In years one, two and your final year, you will take language modules in Spanish and Portuguese, as well as cultural modules, covering a range of topics that draw on literature and film, history and linguistics.You will spend your third year abroad, split between two countries where Spanish and Portuguese are spoken. You will achieve the same linguistic competence regardless of whether you start a language from scratch or have previous knowledge of it.
This is a Portuguese module. Taken over two terms, this is an intensive ab initio course designed for students who have had little or no exposure to Portuguese. It aims to take you from basic to pre-intermediate level, matching the linguistic ability of level A2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), with some aspects of B1 also being explored. The general language class is designed to help you practise and gradually build up confidence in spoken and written Portuguese. Both the European and Brazilian varieties are explored. The intensive grammar classes establish the foundations for the reading and translation of more advanced texts. The translation classes equip you with the relevant competences to tackle translations of literary and non-fiction texts from Portuguese into English. They will also help you work towards accurate translations from English into Portuguese. Over the two terms, you will learn about some key Lusophone writers, artists, contemporary and historical personalities, watch carefully selected video materials, and familiarize yourself with some of the key media outlets of the Lusophone world. By the end of the module, you will be able to communicate fluently in a wide range of everyday situations, hold conversations on routine topics, write and translate simple texts into Portuguese, and read and translate more advanced Portuguese texts into English. You will be acquainted with key aspects of Lusophone cultures across the globe, and be able to establish connections between the language classes and the literary and intellectual worlds explored in the PORT* content modules. We will encourage you to work over the summer to ensure that you start Year 2 with confidence.
This is a Portuguese module. This module introduces students to Portuguese literature with an emphasis on canonical texts and their historical contexts. The first part is dedicated to the origins and first apogee of Portuguese as a literary idiom. From Galician-Portuguese poetry, the module proceeds to three sessions on the various facets of the sixteenth century, and concludes with the prophetic tradition that informed Ant?? Vieira?s writing in the seventeenth century. Thus the first part of the module collects references to an apparently perennial tension in Portuguese literature between imperial glory on the one hand, and loss on the other. This tension, it is argued, is to some extent constitutive of the Portuguese literary tradition. But it also calls for a critique, as the second part of the module demonstrates. In weeks 6-10 students will read modern authors who, whilst reflecting upon the decay of Empire, are most notable for personal narratives of fragmentation and loss. Materials will be available in English translation. All secondary readings for the classes will be in English.
This is a Portuguese module. This course aims to introduce students to both the Brazilian novel and its cultural, social, literary and historical contexts from the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. The module will explore different traditions of novel writing in Brazil, place the emergence of Brazilian novel in relation to the contemporary European novel, and introduce students to a range of important discussions about the novel as a genre, its cultural function, its audiences, and its relation to the social world.
This is a Spanish module. This is a post A-level first year Spanish language module, consolidating level B1 and exploring level B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). By the end of the second term, students are expected to master complex structures of written and spoken Spanish. You should be able to communicate fluently in a variety of contexts and deal with most situations likely to arise when travelling in a Spanish-speaking country. The Grammar and Communicative Language Skills class provides a friendly atmosphere where you can practice and build up confidence in spoken and written Spanish. Different varieties of Spanish will be explored. The Translation classes equip you with the relevant competences to tackle translations from both Spanish into English (literary and non-fiction texts), and English into Spanish (audiovisual materials, including a video that you will produce yourself). You will be acquainted with key aspects of the Hispanic culture(s) across the globe, especially in the Additional Contents and Skills classes.
This is a Spanish module. This module will introduce students to the work of Spain?s most ambitious dramatists of the early twentieth century: Ram??ar?del Valle-Incl? Miguel de Unamuno, and Federico Garc?Lorca. These three writers were key figures in the flourishing of Spanish cultural life between the end of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, the year in which each of them died. Their dramatic works in particular fought against the stodgy, middle-class values that they believed were preventing the Spanish stage from becoming a focus of renewed artistic energy. Working chronologically, this module will examine how these three writers experimented with dramatic form, the possibilities of staging, and the capacity of theatre to challenge its audience to experience art in new ways.
This is a Spanish module. This module will provide an introduction to film analysis and to key aspects of the development of Spanish cinema. Topics examined will include: Surrealism, Melodrama, Film noir and the influence of Italian neo-realism, Postmodernism and the influence on film of the Spanish Civil War, the Franco Regiem, Censorship, the Transition to Democracy, and Postcolonialism.
This is a Spanish module.
This is a Spanish module. This module analyses a range of Latin American cultural forms (novel, short stories, visual material) which have the dialectic between the real and the unreal, the natural and the supernatural, at their core. We will analyse well-known canonical texts as well as less-known works and discuss the notions of Fantastic, Uncanny, Magical Realism and Real Maravilloso. Throughout the module, we will analyse how Latin American cultural production has tackled, through the uncanny and the unreal, issues of gender, politics, identity, nationhood, history, and experimented with narrative forms and genres.
This is a Spanish module. This course offers an introduction to key aspects of global Hispanic history and culture from the late medieval period to the 21st century, and acts as a foundation on which students will build throughout the rest of their degree. It exposes students to a wide variety of materials ? poetry, prose fiction, essay and film ? and explores different ways of making sense of them through historical contextualisation, close reading and critical analysis. Students gain a critical appreciation of the canon of Spanish and Latin American Studies, whilst also developing the tools to explore less canonical authors and works. In the seminars that accompany the lectures, we will focus on discussing the primary materials and develop key skills in reading and writing.
This module provides an introduction to some of the ways in which literary texts have explored the theme of migration from the late19th to the early 21st Century in Latin America. While in recent years migration north from Central and South America to the USA has garnered significant attention in international news media and cultural production alike, this module seeks to contextualise this contemporary crisis by examining key moments of mass migration in recent Latin American history through their literary representation. The movement of people across regional and national borders invariably involves linguistic displacement, and writers have long understood that literary texts have the power to shape public perceptions of migrant communities. Thus by analysing texts which examine historical migrations, students will learn about: some of the economic, political and social changes and conflicts which have led to periods of mass migration; the ways in which migrant communities reciprocally contribute to, accelerate, or produce economic, political, and social change; some of the varied literary styles and genres deployed in Latin America to represent culturally diverse migrant experiences; and the ways in which mass migration is closely linked to questions of indigeneity, race, social class, gender, and conflict in Latin America and that literary texts perpetuate or resist xenophobia, racism, and the negative perception of migrant communities.
Since the 1980s, Afro-Brazilian literature has acquired legitimacy in universities, evidenced by a growing number of academic studies, undergraduate and graduate programmes dedicated to it. Many of these studies address the concept of AfroBrazilian literature itself. Some scholars reject it, for spreading a sense of political identity embodied by the word ?black?. For others, it encompasses both literature about and by black people. For a third group, it is a more elastic theoretical concept, ?capable of spanning the range of discursive boundaries that people use to express their Afro-descendant identity/ies in their literary works? (Duarte, 2012, p. 106). In this module, we will analyse literary representations by and about Afro-Brazilians, from the mid-19th century to the 21st century, available in English translation.
This is a Portuguese module. Taken over two terms, this is an intermediate course that builds on and consolidates previous knowledge of the Portuguese language. Students must have been enrolled in the Beginners? course (PORT0001) offered by the department or must have otherwise undertaken an equivalent course in a different institution or possess basic speaking, writing, and listening skills through self-study. Students will develop skills in listening, reading and translating short literary and non-fiction texts in a variety of registers, including poems, short stories, novels, newspaper articles, and commentaries. Classes explore the conventions of European and Brazilian Portuguese, so that learners can continue to develop their preference for one or the other variant. This module consolidates linguistic ability at Level B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), with some aspects of Level B2 also explored.
This is a Portuguese module. This module will introduce you to the critical study of Portuguese travel narratives, geographical and ethnographic texts produced between c.1450 and 1650. We will read a selection of translated primary texts narrating travels, encounters and confrontations with extra-European cultures, accompanied by a selection of secondary literature highlighting the quandaries of the genre?s intertwinements with imperial expansion and the making of colonial societies in Brazil, Africa and Asia. To highlight the unique characteristics of Portuguese travel writing, the course covers the entire globe, but some emphasis will be placed on early colonial Brazil and the East Indies. The secondary readings will help us to reflect on questions of literary invention, appropriation and stereotyping in the representation of other cultures. At the same time, we shall also examine how travel accounts can function as historical sources and promote a better understanding of the world that produced them.
This is a Spanish module. This is a second-year Spanish language module consolidating your proficiency at level B2 and exploring level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). In the Grammar and Communicative Skills classes you will expand your vocabulary and learn to use increasingly more sophisticated language in a variety of contexts and registers, as well as idioms, expressions and colloquialisms. Different varieties of Spanish will be explored. The Translation classes will help you enhance your translation competences already acquired in the previous year in order to tackle a wider variety of texts in both language directions.
This is a Spanish module. In this module we shall be reading and analysing the novel La Regenta (1884-85) by Leopoldo Alas. Writing under the penname ?Clar?, Alas was the most famous literary critic in Spain at the time he published La Regenta. He had gained a reputation as a scathing cultural commentator but La Regenta surprised many of his contemporaries for the sensitivity with which it depicted a troubled young woman?s search for happiness and a stable identity in a provincial Spanish city. Her name is Ana Ozores, a woman who endures a troubled childhood as the poor relation of an aristocratic family which has fallen on hard times. Still a young adult, she finds herself married to Don V?or Quintanar, an aged and impotent former judge, but increasingly torn between sexual desire for Don lvaro Mes? the local lothario, and a yearning to explore her spiritual life guided by her confessor, Ferm?de Pas. It is her struggle with the competing claims of duty, lust, and spirituality that forms the central thread of the novel.
This is a Spanish module. This module will introduce you to a range of works by a number of key women writers from the Southern Cone and the Andean region. The module will begin with a consideration of the principal issues at stake in approaching women?s writing in Latin America and then focus on specific case studies. We will examine a variety of genres including novel, short story, poetry and essay. We will introduce the historical contexts in which the works have been produced and consider themes such as gender, identity, family, nationhood, modernity and ?race? as well as questions of language and form. This module is taught in Spanish.
This is a Spanish module. This course focuses on the intellectual history of Latin America from the independence period to the 1950s. Topics for discussion include the development of national consciousness; the emergence of nationalism, the role of literature in the creation of Spanish-American identities, as will as issues dealing with poetics and literary expression. The course presents a critical examination of authors such as Alberdi, Sarmiento, Marti, Rodo, Gonzalez Prada, Mariategui, Vasconcelos, Borges, Ryes, Paz and Zea among others. This module is taught in Spanish.
This is a Spanish module. This module will introduce students to a broad range of periods and styles in Latin American cinema, and to concepts in film theory. It will explore thematic questions of nationhood, politics, gender and sexuality, as well as questions specific to cinematic and visual representation.
This is a Spanish module. This module concerns the extraordinary history of Spain in the twentieth century. Over the past hundred years, the country has fought a brutal civil war, and experienced among the most stable and enduring of European dictatorships; toyed with republicanism, before re-establishing itself as a monarchy; and undergone a democratic transition regarded as a model around the world, to then experience several decades of the ?Spanish miracle?, of rapid economic growth and growing soft power. Most recently, the country has seen the political and economic model established during the transition come under strain, through unresolved tensions over fundamental questions of governance and national identity. All of this, while undergoing social change of unprecedented rapidity, that has given the country much of its distinctive feel in recent times.
This is a Spanish module. This module will provide an introduction to the latest literary, political and social changes in contemporary Spain, introducing students to the question of the existence, or not, of a Spanish literature describable as women?s writing. By analysing works by Rosa Montero?s Cr??a del desamor, Dulce Chac?? La voz dormida, Luc?Etxebarria?s Cosmofobia and Najat El Hachmi?s El ltimo patriarca, we will consider the role that writing by women plays in written accounts of collective identities, in providing alternatives to traditional fictional gender stereotypes, in promoting a feminist awareness and in portraying new definitions of Spanishness.
This is a Spanish module. There has been a recent boom in Latin American fiction dealing with Nazism and the Second World War. This module seeks to address the question ?why are Latin American authors writing about Nazism now??. We shall focus on En busca de Klingsor by J. Volpi, Amphitryon by I. Padilla, Los informantes by J.G.V?uez, and El comienzo de la primavera by P. Pron as primary texts. Topics will include issues of space, place and literary ?postnationalism?, violence, dictatorship, peace and reconciliation, and the nature of the relationship between history, identity, reality and fiction.
Images have been of great importance to the interlinked drug wars of the Americas. These conflicts have been subject to extensive visualisation, whether in the form of uncensored media footage, crafted photographs and propaganda, or through the explosion of televisual and cinematic works dealing with drugs and the narcotics trade. Interweaving artistic, cinematic and televisual viewings with theoretical and historical readings, this module will examine the visual politics of the ?War on Drugs?, integrating case studies from Mexico, Colombia and the US. We will consider inter alia how portrayals of violence in the media drive militarisation; how ethical concerns influence aesthetic strategies; visual framings of grief and loss; the ways visual texts highlight the co-dependent relations between drugs, death, capital and the state; and how visual works explore alternative policies, as exemplified by The Wire?s ?Hamsterdam?.
Your Year Abroad is split between two countries where your target languages are spoken. You can participate in a study placement with one of our partner universities, undertake a work placement or British Council language assistantship abroad or a combination of the two (subject to language choice/availability/approval).
This is a Portuguese module. This module is designed for students who have had exposure to Intermediate Portuguese (PORT0005) and, typically, spent several months in Brazil, Portugal or another Lusophone country on their Year Abroad. Native speakers of Portuguese may be present in the classroom. The module is aimed at developing speaking, reading, writing and translating skills in Portuguese to an advanced level of ability and help students gain further insight into aspects of the culture of Portuguese-speaking countries. Proficiency in Portuguese is consolidated at Level B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), with aspects of Level C1 also explored. You will expand your vocabulary and learn to use increasingly complex sentences and structures, as well as idioms, expressions and colloquialisms. Both the Brazilian and European Portuguese variants are covered, and aspects of Luso-African and Luso-Asian culture will be explored. Students are encouraged to establish connections with the materials studied on final-year PORT* content modules. By the end of the module, we expect students to be fluent in one of the world?s most widely spoken languages, and highly skilled in translating literary and non-fiction texts in a variety of registers.
This module explores the colonial, anti-colonial and post-colonial cultural production of the Lusophone world in the 20th and 21st centuries. The first third of the course engages with Portugal, its empire under the Salazar regime, and how it appropriated the Luso-tropicalist theories of the Brazilian sociologist and historian Gilberto Freyre. We will learn about the regime?s scramble for Africa, its management of internal dissent and migration, its position with regard to World War II, and its adoption of Lusotropicalism as a state ideology for the shaping of a Lusophone Atlantic world. We then move to the different ways in which African intellectuals responded through adoption, adaptation or rejection, leading up to the idea of an armed struggle for independence.
This is a Portuguese module. This module provides an opportunity to develop knowledge of the Brazilian cr??a and short story as short narrative genres, based on certain principals of composition and historical reception. It will explore key concepts of narrative theory and the relationship between literature and journalism. A chronological overview of the short story and cr??a will be provided with a focus on the most prominent Brazilian cronistas and short story writers from the 1870's to the present. The module will offer a historical and literary framework for the critical exploration of the set texts, as it aims to trace the development of short fiction considering its relationship to major themes, events in post-colonial Brazilian history.
This is an advanced Spanish language module designed for finalists, consolidating level C1 and exploring level C2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). In the Grammar and Communicative Skills classes, you will consolidate your skills acquired in your Year Abroad. You will also improve your language proficiency by carrying out tasks at C2 level (the highest of CEFR levels). Therefore, you will be exposed and will have to use increasingly sophisticated language in a wider variety of contexts and registers. Different varieties of Spanish will be explored. The Translation classes will consolidate your translation competences already acquired in the previous years. You will be encouraged to make connections with your experience in the Year Abroad and broaden your knowledge of Hispanic culture(s).
This is a Spanish module. This module examines the development of Spanish film from the late 1990s onwards focusing on issues such as gender, migration, genre, national identity and the increasing globalisation of the Spanish film industry.
This is a Spanish module. This module will examine the changing ways in which the Spanish Civil War and subsequent dictatorship have been represented in the contemporary Spanish novelAlthough Spain's transition from Franco's thirty-six year dictatorship to democracy has been considered a success-story, underlying tension and resentment between the opposing sides of the country’s political divide remain. A country in which the defeated of the war were treated as second-class citizens and their dead comrades excluded from official commemoration of the victims clearly has some catching up to do when it comes to national reconciliation. Spain's novelists have reflected this situation through their works, questioning the national silence over the uncomfortable past during the transition to democracy and, in more recent times, joining the national debate on how best to acknowledge both sides of the fratricidal conflict.
This course will focus on the representation of children in film, with special attention to the kind of function the child fulfils in Latin American cinema. This will allow us to explore thematic questions of nationhood, politics, gender and sexuality, and the way childhood is used to envision the past and history, as well as the future and social change. We will also consider questions specific to cinematic and visual representation, such as whether, how and why filmmakers attempt to create a child?s view of the world through aesthetic means, and ethical questions arising around the representation of child suffering and death.
This is a Spanish module. The Peruvian writer, folklorist and ethnologist Jos?ar?Arguedas (1911-1969) is not only the most prominent representative of the neo-indigenist literary movement in the Andean region but also one of its most acute interpreters, particularly with respect to the cultural values and traditions of the Quechua communities of his native country. This course explores Arguedas?s vivid representation of the Andean world through a careful reading of some of his most important literary and ethnological works. From his early short stories and novels?in which he draws from his own personal experiences among the Indians of the southern sierra?to his insightful essays on the historical development of Andean mestizo culture and society, Arguedas captures the spirit of a people that have endured centuries of oppression and, at the same time, presents a challenging economic model for its social and political survival.
This advanced module considers how artists, filmmakers and writers from Latin America have experimented with institutional and popular Catholicism in response to periods of intense political and social upheaval. While the Catholic Church may appear to be monolithic and immutable, students will examine some of the ways in which Catholic aesthetics, theology, doctrine and social teaching have been appropriated, contested, distorted and revolutionized in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin American cultural production. By studying select works of poetry, prose, theatre, film and visual art, students will develop close-reading and analytical skills in order to explore the relationship between a range of divergent, hybrid Catholicisms and contemporary culture. To meet these requirements, students will study artistic engagements with some of the following topics: Afro-Caribbean syncretism and theories of transculturation; Andean Catholicisms and modernity; Liberation Theology and revolutionary movements; the Catholic Church and dictatorship; popular religiosity and the emergence of extreme narco-violence; Catholicism, sex and gender. Specific primary texts studied may vary from year to year. While all texts will be studied in an intellectual and sympathetic manner, students should note that certain texts may prove to be distressing, due to their violent content, and/or challenging to those of firm religious beliefs.
This is a Spanish module. Of the many complex civilisations to arise in the ancient Americas, three stand out: the Maya of Mexico and Guatemala, with a sophisticated art style and the only true writing system ever to develop in the Western Hemisphere; the Aztecs, the last ancient Mexican civilisation, known for their huge city-on-a-lake of Tenochtitlan and for the mass practice of human sacrifice; and the Incas of Peru, whose rigid state structure and many gold and silver treasures so amazed the Spanish conquistadors. This module studies the states, societies, religions and cultural practices of these peoples, drawing on both a rich corpus of primary sources and a vibrant historical literature.
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