Notes · SpanishUK · A-Levels

Integration

La convivencia closes AQA's Multiculturalism in Hispanic society theme and carries three strands: la convivencia de culturas, la educación, and las religiones. The notes cover the three competing models of integration in Spanish - asimilación, multiculturalismo and interculturalidad - the historical idea of convivencia in medieval Iberia and the scholarly caution it deserves, the school as the principal site of integration in Spain, the Spanish nationality rules that privilege Latin American applicants, and the cooperation agreements of 1992 that structure the State's relations with the non-Catholic confessions - together with the Spanish needed to argue about belonging without sliding into cliché.

5 sections~25 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

T·0666 / 16

Exam profile

AO1 · Understand and respond, in speech and in writing, to spoken Spanish on coexistence and belongingAO2 · Understand and respond, in speech and in writing, to written Spanish on integration policy, schooling and religionAO3 · Manipulate the language accurately, using a range of lexis and structureAO4 · Show knowledge of, and respond critically to, coexistence in Hispanic society

Operators:distinguirexplicartraducirresumirvalorarargumentar

basic level

This sub-theme belongs to the A-level-only Multiculturalism theme and does not appear in the AS qualification. At the basic level, secure description of how cultures live together, of the role of schools and of religious diversity is the expectation.

higher level

The full A-Level expects the models of integration to be distinguished and assessed, the school to be discussed as a policy instrument rather than a backdrop, and religious pluralism to be handled with the constitutional framework in view. Answers must define, compare and conclude in Spanish.

Depth

Text

Contents · 5 sections

Integration

Living together: la convivencia de culturas#

AdvancedAQA 7692 3.1.2 - La convivencia: la convivencia de culturasDfE GCE modern foreign languages subject content

Dos modelos y su terreno común

Fig. 1The models are usually presented as opposites. The overlap is where the Spanish debate actually happens: whatever the label, integration requires a shared language, equal rights and everyday contact.

Three models compete, and naming them correctly is the fastest way to sound informed. La asimilación asks the newcomer to adopt the majority culture and to leave the culture of origin in private; the classic criticism is that it demands a loss and offers acceptance only in exchange. El multiculturalismo recognises distinct communities and their right to maintain their own institutions and practices; the classic criticism is that it can produce sociedades paralelas, groups living side by side without meeting. La interculturalidad, the term most used in Spain and in Latin America, insists on exchange between cultures rather than mere coexistence, and is usually paired with the demand for equality of rights. Note that convivencia itself means living together, and that AQA's own Spanish title for this sub-theme is la convivencia.

Spanish history supplies a term that must be handled with care. La convivencia is used to describe the coexistence of Christians, Muslims and Jews in medieval Iberia, and Toledo is often called la ciudad de las tres culturas. The period genuinely produced remarkable exchange - translation, philosophy, science, architecture - and its traces are visible in the Spanish language itself, which contains thousands of words of Arabic origin, from almohada and aceite to ojalá. But historians have long warned that the word can romanticise a reality that also included subordination, periodic violence, forced conversion and, in 1492, the expulsion of the Jews. The mature formulation is that la convivencia medieval fue real pero desigual, y conviene evitar tanto el mito idílico como su negación.

Move to the present with concrete Spanish examples, since AO4 rewards knowledge rather than theory. Integration in Spain happens above all in three places: the school, the workplace and the neighbourhood. Sport and the peña or local association matter; so does language, and Spain has a decisive advantage here, because a large share of its immigrant population arrives already speaking Spanish. That fact shapes everything: it accelerates schooling, employment and naturalisation, and it means Spain's integration debate is less about language than about housing, work and papers. Being able to say that - la lengua, que en otros países es la primera barrera, en España lo es mucho menos - is an analytical observation few candidates make.

Nationality law makes the same point in legal form and is excellent, precise AO4 material. Spanish law requires ten years of legal residence for naturalisation in the general case, but only two years for nationals of Ibero-American countries, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea and Portugal, and for Sephardic Jews - a preference founded on historical and linguistic ties. The consequence is a two-speed path to citizenship, and it explains why Latin American migrants in Spain acquire full civic rights far sooner than migrants from Morocco or Senegal. A candidate who connects that legal detail to integration outcomes is doing exactly what a critical and analytical response means.

Worked example

Translation into Spanish: writing about coexistence

Translate into Spanish: In this neighbourhood people from twenty countries live together. The council organises activities so that neighbours get to know one another, although some residents complain that they never mix. What matters, says the head teacher, is that children grow up together.

Choose the verb for live together
Convivir is the precise verb and it echoes the sub-theme's own title: en este barrio conviven personas de veinte países. Vivir juntos would be understood but is weaker and would waste the key word.
Use the subjunctive after para que
So that neighbours get to know one another introduces purpose with a change of subject: para que los vecinos se conozcan. Conocerse in the reciprocal sense is get to know one another; the reflexive pronoun carries the reciprocity, so do not add el uno al otro.
Choose the mood after aunque
Although some residents complain reports a fact the writer accepts, so aunque takes the indicative: aunque algunos vecinos se quejan. Quejarse de que may be followed by the indicative for a stated fact: se quejan de que nunca se mezclan.
Build the cleft with lo que
What matters is that children grow up together needs the neuter relative: lo que importa es que los niños crezcan juntos. Es que introducing a value judgement takes the subjunctive - crezcan, from crecer, with the c to zc change in the first person and throughout the present subjunctive.
Place the reporting clause naturally
Says the head teacher is a parenthetical: dice la directora, placed between commas after the first element, which is where Spanish naturally puts it. El director or la directora is the head teacher of a school; el rector heads a university.

Result: En este barrio conviven personas de veinte países. El ayuntamiento organiza actividades para que los vecinos se conozcan, aunque algunos residentes se quejan de que nunca se mezclan. Lo que importa, dice la directora del colegio, es que los niños crezcan juntos.

Typical mistakes

Presenting medieval convivencia as an idyll; historians stress that coexistence was real but hierarchical and periodically violent.
Using integración and asimilación as synonyms; assimilation is one model of integration, and the criticised one.

Active revision

Compara en español, en unas 140 palabras, los tres modelos de integración, y defiende uno de ellos con dos argumentos y una concesión.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Spanish (7692) specification - subject content (AQA) · GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages (Department for Education)

School as the engine of integration: la educación#

StandardAQA 7692 3.1.2 - La convivencia: la educaciónDfE GCE modern foreign languages subject content

The school is where integration is decided, for a simple structural reason: education in Spain is compulsory and free from six to sixteen, and the right to schooling applies to every child living in the country regardless of the family's administrative status. That makes the classroom the one institution that reaches almost every newcomer's household. The vocabulary should be Spanish and exact: la escolarización obligatoria, el colegio for primary, el instituto for secondary, la etapa de Educación Primaria and la ESO - Educación Secundaria Obligatoria - el Bachillerato and la Formación Profesional after sixteen, el alumnado, el profesorado, el claustro, el AMPA, the parents' association.

Spain built specific instruments for newly arrived pupils and you should name at least one. Las aulas de acogida or aulas de enlace, whose exact name varies by autonomous community, provide intensive Spanish for pupils who arrive without it, usually while they attend ordinary classes for the rest of the timetable. Alongside them sit la mediación intercultural, professional mediators working between families and schools; los programas de refuerzo for pupils who arrive mid-year or with interrupted schooling; and, in some communities, classes in the language and culture of origin. The pedagogical argument for all of these is that language acquisition must not cost a year of curriculum, and the political argument is that separation must be temporary.

The central problem, and the one that produces the best answers, is la segregación escolar. Where immigrant families are concentrated in particular districts and where publicly funded private schools - los centros concertados - attract families with more resources, migrant and disadvantaged pupils concentrate in a minority of state schools. Spanish education researchers describe this as a concentration effect that reproduces inequality and undermines the very contact on which integration depends. The mechanism can be stated compactly: la segregación residencial se traslada a la escuela, y la escuela segregada deja de ser el lugar donde las culturas se encuentran. Naming that mechanism is worth more than any general praise of diversity.

Evaluate honestly. The evidence for education as an integration instrument is strong: it teaches the language, it creates friendships across origins, it certifies qualifications, and it reaches parents through the children. Its limits are equally clear: schools cannot fix housing, cannot regularise a parent's status, and cannot compensate alone for poverty. So the balanced conclusion is a conditional one: la escuela es el instrumento más eficaz de integración, siempre que no reproduzca en sus aulas la separación que existe fuera de ellas - note siempre que plus subjunctive, an elegant structure that AQA lists among the subordinating conjunctions requiring the subjunctive.

Worked example

Translation into English: a passage on a reception classroom

Translate into English: «Cuando Aicha llegó al instituto, no entendía ni una palabra. La mandaron al aula de acogida tres horas al día y el resto del tiempo se sentaba en clase de matemáticas, donde los números eran lo único que compartía con los demás. Ocho meses después, era ella quien traducía en las reuniones de padres.»

Map the tenses
Llegó is preterite; no entendía is imperfect for a continuing state; la mandaron is preterite with an unstated subject, so English needs a passive: she was sent. Se sentaba is imperfect habitual: she would sit. Era ella quien traducía is a cleft in the imperfect.
Render the idiom of incomprehension
No entendía ni una palabra is did not understand a single word. Ni here is an emphatic negative, stronger than a plain no, and English marks it with a single or one.
Keep the institutional terms
El instituto is the secondary school and el aula de acogida is the reception or induction class - note that aula is feminine although it takes el in the singular, one of the nouns AQA's grammar list flags under el with feminine nouns beginning with stressed a.
Preserve the image of the numbers
Los números eran lo único que compartía con los demás: the numbers were the only thing she shared with the others. Lo único que is the neuter relative construction; los demás is the others or the rest.
Keep the final cleft and its point
Era ella quien traducía en las reuniones de padres: it was she who did the interpreting at parents' evenings. The cleft carries the reversal that is the point of the passage, so do not flatten it to she translated.

Result: When Aicha arrived at the secondary school, she did not understand a single word. She was sent to the reception class for three hours a day, and for the rest of the time she sat in maths lessons, where the numbers were the only thing she shared with the others. Eight months later, it was she who did the interpreting at parents' evenings.

Typical mistakes

Translating colegio as college; el colegio is a school, and a sixth-form or further-education college is closer to un instituto or un centro de formación profesional.
Assuming children without papers cannot attend school in Spain; schooling is a right for every child of compulsory school age.

Active revision

Explica en español, en unas 120 palabras, por qué la segregación escolar amenaza la integración, y propone dos medidas concretas usando «siempre que» + subjuntivo al menos una vez.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Spanish (7692) specification - subject content (AQA)

Religious plurality: las religiones#

AdvancedAQA 7692 3.1.2 - La convivencia: las religionesDfE GCE modern foreign languages subject content

Start again from Article 16 of the 1978 Constitution, because it governs the whole strand: freedom of ideology, religion and worship is guaranteed, no confession has a state character, and the public authorities are to take account of the religious beliefs of Spanish society and maintain relations of cooperation with the Catholic Church and the other confessions. Spain is aconfesional rather than laico: unlike the French model, it cooperates with religious bodies rather than excluding them from public life. That single distinction organises everything that follows, from religious education in schools to burial arrangements and prison chaplaincy.

The concrete form of that cooperation is worth knowing precisely. In 1992 Spain concluded cooperation agreements with the federations representing the Evangelical, Jewish and Islamic confessions, giving them rights in areas such as religious assistance in hospitals and prisons, the civil effects of religious marriage, and the possibility of religious education in state schools. The Islamic Commission of Spain is the interlocutor for the Muslim confession. In practice implementation has been uneven - the provision of Islamic religious education, for instance, has been slower and patchier than the agreement anticipated - and noting the gap between the legal framework and its application is precisely the critical judgement examiners reward.

The live debates should be presented as debates, not verdicts. El velo in schools and public employment is contested, with no single national rule and decisions often taken by individual schools; la financiación of religious bodies, and the historic arrangements for the Catholic Church, are periodically discussed; the place of religious symbols in public buildings recurs; and la clase de religión in state schools raises questions about who teaches it, who is entitled to it and what pupils who do not take it should do instead. In each case the honest framing is a tension between two protected values - religious freedom on one side, equality or neutrality on the other - which is exactly how Spanish public argument itself is conducted.

In Latin America the religious map is different and changing fast, and the specification lets you use it. Catholicism remains historically dominant, and popular devotion is deeply woven into national identity - la Virgen de Guadalupe in Mexico is the clearest case. But las iglesias evangélicas have grown very substantially, particularly in Central America, altering politics as well as worship. Popular religiosity is frequently syncretic, blending Catholic forms with indigenous or African traditions, as in the Day of the Dead in Mexico or Andean festivals that combine Catholic saints with pre-Hispanic practice. The right Spanish for this is el sincretismo religioso, and using it accurately places you in the top band for knowledge.

Worked example

Structuring a two-sided answer on a contested question

The examiner asks: ¿Debería permitirse el velo en los centros educativos? Build a spoken answer of about fifty seconds that argues both sides and reaches a position.

Refuse the false simplicity first
Open by identifying the conflict rather than the answer: Es una cuestión en la que chocan dos derechos protegidos por la Constitución: la libertad religiosa y el principio de igualdad. This immediately signals analysis.
State the case for permission
Quienes defienden que se permita alegan que prohibirlo excluiría de las aulas precisamente a las alumnas a las que se pretende proteger. Note the subjunctive se permita after defienden que when it expresses a demand rather than a report.
State the case for restriction
Quienes se oponen sostienen que los centros públicos deberían ser espacios neutros y temen la presión familiar sobre las menores. Report the argument in its strongest form - a weak version of the opposing case weakens your own.
Introduce the factual clarification
En España no existe una norma estatal única, de modo que la decisión recae a menudo en el reglamento de cada centro. A candidate who knows the state of the law rather than only the arguments stands out.
Reach a qualified position
Personalmente, me inclino por permitirlo, siempre que la decisión sea libre, porque la escuela integra mejor incluyendo que excluyendo. Siempre que plus subjunctive turns an opinion into a conditional position, which is what the top band rewards.

Result: Es una cuestión en la que chocan dos derechos protegidos por la Constitución: la libertad religiosa y el principio de igualdad. Quienes defienden que se permita alegan que prohibirlo excluiría de las aulas precisamente a las alumnas a las que se pretende proteger. Quienes se oponen sostienen que los centros públicos deberían ser espacios neutros y temen la presión familiar sobre las menores. En España no existe una norma estatal única, de modo que la decisión recae a menudo en el reglamento de cada centro. Personalmente, me inclino por permitirlo, siempre que la decisión sea libre, porque la escuela integra mejor incluyendo que excluyendo.

Typical mistakes

Describing Spain as a secular state in the French sense; the Constitution establishes cooperation with confessions, not separation from them.
Treating Latin American religion as uniformly Catholic and unchanging; evangelical growth and syncretism are central to the current picture.

Active revision

Redacta en español unas 130 palabras que expliquen el marco legal de la pluralidad religiosa en España y señalen una diferencia entre la norma y su aplicación.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Spanish (7692) specification - subject content (AQA)

El léxico y los giros: the language of belonging#

StandardAQA 7692 3.1.2 - La convivenciaAQA 7692 3.3 Grammar

The lexical field, in blocks. La convivencia: convivir, compartir, respetar, aceptar, tolerar, acoger, adaptarse, arraigarse, echar raíces, sentirse parte de. Los modelos: la asimilación, el multiculturalismo, la interculturalidad, la cohesión social, la diversidad, el mestizaje cultural, las sociedades paralelas, el gueto. La escuela: la escolarización, el aula de acogida, el refuerzo, la mediación, el absentismo, el abandono escolar temprano, la tutoría, el AMPA. La religión: la aconfesionalidad, la libertad de culto, los acuerdos de cooperación, el lugar de culto, la mezquita, la sinagoga, el templo, la festividad, el ayuno, la peregrinación. Note that tolerar in Spanish, as in English, is weaker than aceptar - and Spanish public debate says so explicitly: no basta con tolerar, hay que reconocer.

Belonging is expressed with a small set of high-value structures. Sentirse plus adjective for identity: me siento español y marroquí a la vez. Considerarse plus noun: se consideran de aquí. Pertenecer a for membership. Identificarse con for identification. Echar raíces for putting down roots, and desarraigo for its opposite, uprootedness - a word with no single English equivalent and therefore worth knowing. And the double-identity formula that Spanish handles gracefully: no se trata de elegir entre una cultura y otra, sino de habitar las dos.

For argument, this sub-theme needs conditional and purposive structures, since almost every claim is about what would produce integration. Purpose: para que plus subjunctive; con el fin de plus infinitive; a fin de que plus subjunctive. Condition: siempre que, con tal de que, a condición de que, all plus subjunctive; and si plus indicative or imperfect subjunctive for real and unreal conditions respectively. Time: cuando, en cuanto, hasta que, mientras - all with the subjunctive when referring to the future: cuando los barrios dejen de estar segregados, la escuela cambiará. That last sentence contains the two structures examiners most want to see and states the argument of the whole topic.

Finally, a caution about the words for people and places. Prefer los recién llegados or las personas migrantes to los extranjeros when discussing residents, since many are citizens. Prefer el barrio to el gueto unless you mean the analytical concept. Speak of la población de origen extranjero rather than los inmigrantes when second generations are involved, since people born in Spain are not immigrants. And avoid the flat adjectives integrado and no integrado for individuals; integration is a two-way process, and Spanish captures that with la integración es una vía de doble sentido - a phrase that will earn its keep in any essay on this sub-theme.

Worked example

Turning a definition into an argument

Turn the bare claim La integración es importante into an A-level paragraph that defines, distinguishes, evidences and concludes.

Define, and define against something
La integración no consiste en que los recién llegados renuncien a su cultura, sino en que participen en igualdad de condiciones. Note the two subjunctives after consiste en que, and the no... sino structure that does the defining work.
Name the model you are defending
Ese es el planteamiento de la llamada interculturalidad, que se distingue tanto de la asimilación como del multiculturalismo. Naming the position places your argument in a real debate.
Give a Spanish instrument as evidence
En España, las aulas de acogida ilustran ese enfoque: enseñan la lengua sin separar de forma permanente al alumnado del resto del centro. Evidence should demonstrate the definition, not merely accompany it.
Concede the obstacle
Ahora bien, la segregación residencial limita ese objetivo, porque un centro donde casi todo el alumnado es de origen extranjero difícilmente puede propiciar el contacto. The concession is specific and mechanical, not rhetorical.
Conclude with a conditional and a subjunctive
Por eso, mientras la vivienda siga estando segregada, la escuela sólo podrá integrar parcialmente. Mientras plus subjunctive for a future condition is exactly the structure the A-level grammar list expects.

Result: La integración no consiste en que los recién llegados renuncien a su cultura, sino en que participen en igualdad de condiciones. Ese es el planteamiento de la llamada interculturalidad, que se distingue tanto de la asimilación como del multiculturalismo. En España, las aulas de acogida ilustran ese enfoque: enseñan la lengua sin separar de forma permanente al alumnado del resto del centro. Ahora bien, la segregación residencial limita ese objetivo, porque un centro donde casi todo el alumnado es de origen extranjero difícilmente puede propiciar el contacto. Por eso, mientras la vivienda siga estando segregada, la escuela sólo podrá integrar parcialmente.

Typical mistakes

Writing cuando los barrios dejarán de estar segregados; a future reference after cuando requires the present subjunctive - cuando dejen.
Calling second-generation citizens inmigrantes; they are españoles de origen extranjero, and the distinction is politically and factually important.

Active revision

Escribe seis frases en español sobre la integración, tres con oraciones finales («para que», «a fin de que») y tres con oraciones temporales de futuro («cuando», «en cuanto», «mientras»), todas con subjuntivo.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Spanish (7692) specification - grammar (AQA)

En el examen: the sub-theme in Papers 1 and 3#

AdvancedAQA 7692 4.4 Paper 1 - Listening, reading and writingAQA 7692 4.6 Paper 3 - Speaking, part one

Material on coexistence tends to be personal in listening and institutional in reading, and the two demand different techniques. A recorded testimony from a second-generation speaker will be full of identity language - me siento de aquí y de allá, ni de un sitio ni de otro - and of code-switching; the questions will ask about feelings and belonging, so track the adjectives and the verbs of feeling. A written report on schooling or religious agreements will be full of institutional nouns and passives; the questions will ask about causes, purposes and consequences, so track the connectors para, debido a, con el fin de, de modo que.

This is also a strong candidate for the summary question, because policy texts have a clear three-part structure - situation, measure, limitation - that maps neatly onto three content points. Apply the rules exactly: content under AO1 for listening or AO2 for reading, language under AO3, full sentences, own words as far as possible, marking to the first natural break between 90 and 100 words, no credit for lifted language in the AO3 mark, and no content mark where irrelevant material is included. A summary that reports situation, measure and limitation in that order will almost always hit the content points.

For the stimulus card, hold a spine of five facts: the three models of integration; medieval convivencia and the caution it requires; the shared-language advantage in Spain; the two-speed nationality rule; and the 1992 cooperation agreements with the Evangelical, Jewish and Islamic confessions. Add one mechanism - residential segregation transferring into schools - and one conditional judgement - integration works when contact is possible - and you can sustain six minutes on any card in this area without a script.

Two questions for the examiner that meet AQA's criteria and suit any card here: ¿Cree usted que la escuela es el mejor instrumento de integración? and ¿Qué papel juega la religión en la convivencia de su ciudad? Both contain a conjugated verb and seek an opinion or information. Prepare also a clarifying question you can use if the card is broad, since asking for a distinction is itself sophisticated: ¿Se refiere usted a la convivencia entre generaciones o entre culturas de origen distinto?

Worked example

The summary question on a schooling text

A reading text of about 300 words describes a Barcelona school with a large proportion of pupils of foreign origin, its reception classroom, and the difficulty that the neighbouring publicly funded private school takes few such pupils. Write the 95-word summary in Spanish.

Fix the three content points
Situation: high concentration of pupils of foreign origin in one state school. Measure: the reception classroom and support programmes. Limitation: the neighbouring concertado school takes few, so segregation persists. Note them in Spanish before composing.
Reformulate the institutional vocabulary
If the text says el centro cuenta con un aula de acogida, write dispone de un espacio específico para el aprendizaje inicial del idioma. The AO3 mark depends on your words, not the author's.
Report the criticism, do not join it
Use el texto señala que and según la dirección del centro. Attribution keeps the summary faithful and prevents the commonest error, which is to convert the third content point into your own opinion about school choice.
Manage the word budget
Roughly 30 words per point brings you to about 95. Leave no room for a personal conclusion: it earns nothing and can push a real content point past the cut-off.
Re-read once for language only
Check agreement in complex noun phrases (alumnado de origen extranjero), the subjunctive after any purpose clause you have used, and accents on words such as difícilmente and según.

Result: Model summary (94 words): «El texto describe un centro público de Barcelona en el que una parte muy elevada del alumnado procede de familias de origen extranjero. Explica que la escuela dispone de un espacio específico para el aprendizaje inicial del castellano, así como de programas de refuerzo y de mediación con las familias. Señala, no obstante, que el colegio concertado del mismo barrio escolariza a muy pocos de estos alumnos, de modo que la concentración se mantiene. Según la dirección, sin una distribución más equilibrada, ningún programa interno bastará para corregir la segregación.»

Typical mistakes

Discussing integration only as something migrants must do; the two-way formulation is both more accurate and better credited.
Ignoring second generations, whose experience is the core of most authentic Spanish material on this sub-theme.

Active revision

Busca un testimonio en español de una persona de segunda generación. Anota cinco expresiones de identidad y úsalas para redactar una intervención oral de un minuto sobre la pertenencia múltiple.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: AQA A-level Spanish (7692) specification - scheme of assessment (AQA)

References & sources

Sources

AQA

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for modern foreign languages

Integration

5 sections~25 min reading time4 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

Integration

Key points

Translation into Spanish: writing about coexistence

Key points

Translation into English: a passage on a reception classroom

Key points

Structuring a two-sided answer on a contested question

Key points

Turning a definition into an argument

Key points

The summary question on a schooling text

Sources

Integration

Key points

Translation into Spanish: writing about coexistence

Key points

Translation into English: a passage on a reception classroom

Key points

Structuring a two-sided answer on a contested question

Key points

Turning a definition into an argument

Key points

The summary question on a schooling text

Sources