Spanish Express’ Spanish film & literature Ultimate Workshop is an intensive 6-hour online course that will ensure attendees a comprehensive understanding of the literature/film’s plot; social, historical and cultural context; characters; quotes; scenography; and much more!
These will be concisely broken down by qualified tutors and examiners, who will not only teach you all you need about these works, but also share their in-depth knowledge of how to best answer exam questions to aid you in achieving your top grade.
These workshops can be offered to individual students as well as to sixth form colleges, where a single or a series of bespoke workshops can be organised for an A level group.
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Check our courses!
From these ultimate workshops you will:
🙋Strengthen your language proficiency with relevant grammar and vocab
📚Build confidence in your knowledge of the film/literature and writing essays
📝Learn the checklist of everything examiners look for when giving the highest marks
📃Establish a stronger understanding of the different features of the texts, of which exam questions are usually based on
💻Densely informative sessions kept lively with tailored activities throughout
📑 Have 2 essays marked and graded by our qualified examiners
The Spanish film & literature workshop will bring you these and more!
The workshops available are:
Literature
Ficciones
- Jorge Luis BorgesStep into Borges' labyrinth of mirrors and infinite libraries, where reality bends and stories fold in on themselves . These aren't just tales, they're intellectual puzzles that will haunt your imagination. Warning: may cause obsession with secret societies and non-existent books.
Réquiem por un campesino español
- Ramón J. SenderA single gunshot echoes through a Spanish village, and one man's conscience unravels. This devastating portrait of betrayal and rural tragedy burns with moral urgency. A forgotten masterpiece of Spanish Civil War literature that refuses to let you look away.
Modelos de Mujer
- Almudena GrandesGrandes gives voice to the voiceless, cleaning ladies, women who bend but never break. These interconnected lives form a vibrant tapestry of Madrid's working class, fierce and funny and utterly alive. Warning: may cause sudden urges to call your mother.
El Túnel
- Ernesto SábatoOne glance through a window. One obsession that curdles into madness. Sábato's claustrophobic masterpiece traps you inside a murderer's mind as he constructs his own prison of jealousy and art. The perfect novel for anyone who's ever loved too much, or thought they did.
El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba
- Gabriel García MárquezEvery Friday, the colonel waits for a pension letter that never comes. Meanwhile, his only inheritance is a fighting cock and his only weapon is dignity. García Márquez at his most restrained and devastating—proof that epic tragedy lives in small rooms.
Primera Memoria
- Ana María MatuteA civil war seen through a child's eyes, where adults become strangers and islands become prisons. Matute captures the moment innocence cracks open with crystalline, unsettling precision. A coming-of-age story that arrives too early, and never really ends.
Nada
- Carmen LaforetBarcelona, 1940: a starving student climbs stairs to a boarding house full of shadows and secrets. Laforet's explosive debut pours hunger and longing onto every page, physical, spiritual, unbearably raw. The novel that changed Spanish literature overnight.
La Casa de Bernarda Alba
– Federico García LorcaEight women, four walls, zero escape. Lorca's masterpiece of repressed desire simmers under the Andalusian sun until tragedy explodes. A claustrophobic pressure cooker of jealousy, silence, and the terrible cost of honor. Not a man in sight, none needed.
La Casa de los Espíritus
– Isabel AllendeaThree generations of women bend reality around them—clairvoyance, political upheaval, and passions that refuse to die. Allende's sweeping family saga pours magic into history until you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. A house that breathes, remembers, and finally rebels.
Eva Luna
– Isabel AllendeAn orphan storyteller reinvents her world one tale at a time, weaving narratives strong enough to topple dictators. Allende at her most playful and defiant—where Scheherazade meets South American revolution. Warning: may cause belief in the redemptive power of fiction.
Crónica de una muerte anunciada
– Gabriel García MárquezEveryone knew Santiago Nasar would be murdered. Everyone. García Márquez unravels the inevitability of tragedy with forensic precision and fever-dream logic. A murder mystery where the only mystery is why nobody stopped it.
Como agua para chocolate
– Laura EsquivelTita's tears fall into the wedding cake, and the guests weep with longing. Esquivel serves up desire so potent it literally poisons, ignites, and transforms—one recipe at a time. A novel that proves the kitchen is the most dangerous room in the house.
Bodas de Sangre
– Federico García LorcaA bride, a groom, and the lover who won't stay buried. Lorca's rural tragedy unfolds like a knife fight in moonlight—passion, honor, and blood running through the dry riverbeds of Andalusia. Three acts, zero exits, one inevitable catastrophe.
Why choose a literature workshop?
Books don’t just teach you vocabulary, they hand you the keys to a culture’s secret rooms. When you read Cortázar or García Márquez in Spanish, you stop translating and start inhabiting the language: its rhythms, its silences, its particular ways of seeing the world. Our literature workshops guide you through these masterworks with expert tutors who unpack context, history, and those untranslatable phrases that make Spanish feel alive. Whether you’re wrestling with Borges’ labyrinths or Grandes’ working-class Madrid, you’ll emerge with Spanish that carries weight and nuance.
Films
El Laberinto del Fauno
- Guillermo del ToroCivil War Spain, 1944: a girl escapes into a labyrinth where fauns assign impossible tasks. Del Toro weaves fairy tale darkness and historical brutality into something that cuts both ways. Not a film for children, though it understands them perfectly.
Diarios de Motocicleta
- Walter SallesTwo friends, one motorcycle, and a continent that transforms privilege into conscience. Salles captures the moment young Guevara became Che—not through speeches, but through leper colonies and Incan ruins. A road movie where the destination is revolution.
La Lengua de las Mariposas
- José Luis CuerdaGalicia, 1936: a boy learns Latin and butterfly names while fascism creeps into his classroom like fog. Cuerda's tender, shattering portrait of innocence dismantled builds quietly toward inevitable tragedy. The teacher every child deserves, and the history no child should.
La Historia Oficial
- Luis PuenzoA history teacher discovers her adopted daughter's real parents were disappeared. Puenzo's Oscar-winning thriller forces Argentina's darkest secrets through the keyhole of one middle-class home. The comfortable lies we tell ourselves, exposed.
La Misma Luna
- Patricia RiggenA nine-year-old crosses the border alone to find his mother in LA. Riggen's unflinching yet tender portrait of separated families follows one boy through the brutal geography of the American Dream. The same moon rises over both sides of the wall.
Las 13 Rosas
- Emilio Martínez-LázaroMadrid, 1939: thirteen young women face the firing squad for a crime they didn't commit. Martínez-Lázaro reconstructs the youngest victims of Franco's repression with devastating dignity. History written in lipstick, courage, and roses.
Mar Adentro
- Alejandro AmenábarTwenty-eight years paralyzed, one man fights for the right to die with dignity. Amenábar's Oscar-winning masterpiece turns a hospital room into an ocean of memory and desire. A film about life that happens to be about death. Warning: may cause reevaluation of everything.
También La Lluvia
- Icíar BollaínA film crew shoots a Columbus epic while indigenous Bolivians fight for water rights outside their window. Bollaín's fierce, meta-cinematic indictment of exploitation then and now. History doesn't repeat—it just changes cameras.
Volver
- Pedro AlmodóvarMothers return from the dead, secrets ferment in restaurant freezers, and Penélope Cruz sings. Almodóvar's hot-blooded, hilarious meditation on female resilience turns grief into farce into something transcendent. The living and the dead, sharing tapas.
Ocho Apellidos Vascos
- Emilio Martínez-LázaroA Sevillian boy follows his Basque ex-girlfriend north, pretending to be Basque to win her back. Martínez-Lázaro's record-breaking comedy mines Spain's regional tensions for genuine laughs and unexpected heart. Stereotypes dismantled, one txistorra at a time.
Voces Inocentes
- Luis MandokiEl Salvador, 1980: an eleven-year-old boy faces the impossible choice between family and survival. Mandoki's shattering, autobiographical war film captures childhood innocence under siege with devastating clarity. The games children play when bullets replace toys.
Todo Sobre Mi Madre
- Pedro AlmodóvarA grieving mother travels to Barcelona to find that her son's father is now a woman. Almodóvar's lush, compassionate tribute to women who survive weaves together: nuns, actresses, and prostitutes in a vivid tapestry of maternal love and chosen family.
Machuca
- Andrés WoodSantiago, 1973: two boys from opposite worlds forge a friendship as their country tears itself apart. Wood's tender, brutal coming-of-age story captures the moment childhood ends and history intervenes. The coup seen from a schoolyard, forever changed.
Why choose a film workshop?
Cinema throws you into Spanish at full speed with accents, slang, body language, the whole unscripted mess of how people actually talk. Our film workshops use iconic movies from Spain and Latin America as immersive classrooms, pausing to dissect dialogue, cultural references, and those moments where subtitles simply give up. You’ll learn to hear the difference between Mexican and Argentine Spanish, catch jokes that don’t translate, and absorb grammar through obsession with the story. From Almodóvar’s Madrid to del Toro’s dark fairy tales, Spanish becomes something you feel rather than study.
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Can’t find the programme you are looking for? Create your own!
Customized and private for you as an individual student or for your A level group from your sixth form college: individual classes, an ongoing class series, an intensive half day or full day workshop and much more…anything you can dream up!
Design a programme, class series or workshop that’s best for your goals and your schedule and we’ll set everything up for you!
We’re here to help you every step of the way!
Spanish film & literature workshop specifications:
👩 For A level students or students at B1/Intermediate level
⏰ 4 sessions, 1½ hours each
📚Exclusive booklet included with all relevant materials and activities
📄Practical exercises, including vocabulary, grammar, and understanding of the material
🙋 Interactive activities with the class (Kahoot, Quizlet, etc.)
📑 Includes real exemplar essays marked by examiners
📝2 of your essays marked by the teacher and additional examiners