In this edition we are pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Bulletin of Advanced Spanish / University of Glasgow Sixth Form Essay Competition: Aidan Brooke. He duly wins an Amazon voucher kindly donated by the University of Glasgow’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures. His winning entry, Sábato, el incendiario, is published on a separate page of this edition. So too is the entry by runner-up Lucy Stapledon, The Fighting Cholitas Bolivianas.
Our judges had over twice as many entries to pour over compared to the 2022 competition. The subject matter ranged from familiar themes such as bull-fighting, the Spanish Civil War and Pinochet to more innovative topics such as Columbus’ Primera Carta and Mexico’s skeletal celebrity La Catrina. “It would be no exaggeration to say that they were all well written pieces,” the judges commented. “The better structured the essay, the more it stood out.” The judges also welcomed entrants taking “an unusual and entertaining perspective on their subject matter.”
The winning entry and the runner-up caught the eye because they managed to combine elements of both academic analysis and short story. In Aidan’s piece, “the focus on Sábato’s pyromaniac tendencies added originality and even an anarchic element” to the writing. Lucy, the runner-up, told an “original and engaging story, combining human interest, social and historical analysis, and local colour”.
In addition to the winner and runner-up, the judges commended the following entries:
Víctor Andrade (La participación extranjera en la guerra civil española): “good topic, well presented”.
Ava Brand (Bad Bunny): “original and very contemporary”.
Ottavia Eliot (Cómo influyó la colonización española de México en el siglo 16 en las creencias religiosas en México): “particularly good analysis of the Conquista and the present day”.
Eve Mellor (La Catrina): “nice tracing of the development of the figure in a feminist context”.
Arman Nedungadi (Columbus in his own words): “the detailed exegesis of a source text was a sophisticated approach at this level and a thoughtful treatment of a contentious historical figure”.
Lorenzo Peltretti (Las corridas de toros): “comprehensive analysis”.
Orlando Robinson (El Narcotráfico en Colombia): “clear structure, solid analysis”.
Joe Smiley (La discriminación y el maltrato generalizados de los latinoamericanos en los Estados Unidos): “a well-developed discursive essay, backed up with statistics”.
The Bulletin Team would like to thank all those who took part (and those who encouraged them along the way). We envisage this becoming an annual event, and would welcome feedback from teachers about the optimal time of year at which to run it.
Bulletin of Advanced Spanish 