The Bulletin of Advanced Spanish / University of Glasgow Sixth Form Essay Competition has become a highlight of the hispanists’ calendar. For the Bulletin’s readers and editors it provides a snapshot of the topics that are finding traction with this year’s pre-university hispanists. For students, it allows them to express themselves on aspects of their studies that they find inspiring, but that are not necessarily part of the exam syllabus.
Judges were again faced with a difficult choice, given the variety of topics and different approaches taken. After much deliberation, Esa Sharaf emerged as our 2024 winner. Esa duly receives an Amazon voucher kindly donated by the University of Glasgow’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures. The judges called his entry ‘an original topic which achieves good reader engagement with its combination of fact and personal opinion, effective use of secondary sources and strong, narrative-style opening, with a good sense of drama’. Read it in this edition of the Bulletin.
The judges commended the following short-listed entries:
- the Camino de Santiago: how its popularity squares with the decline of formalised religion. (Alastair Maynard)
- Lazarillo de Tormes: the social-historical context. (Johnny Byng)
- Carlos V’s failure to defeat Lutheranism from 1529-1555 (Finn Murphy)
- La ley de memoria democrática (Marisa María Silva)
- ¿Se debe continuar venerando a Eva Perón como figura histórica y política? (Aashna Bhojwani)
The judges also commented on ways in which entrants might be able to improve their chances, eg:
- paragraph to the max. A number of competition entrants were reluctant to divide up their text, despite the refreshing effect of doing so. In general, shorter paragraphs draw the reader in; long ones can be off-putting.
- a number of entrants provided helpful bibliographies or footnotes, though not all footnotes included worthwhile detail.
- if there’s a word limit, stick to it. A number of entries exceeded the specified 700-850 word length for this year’s competition.
Our thanks to all who took part (and those who encouraged them along the way). We welcome feedback on format and scheduling of future competitions.
Bulletin of Advanced Spanish 