Colindancias is the result of a collaborative effort between professors of Spanish language and literature from Central European universities, who created the Regional Network of Hispanists from Hungary, Romania and Serbia in 2009. A year later, they found an official platform thanks to the CEEPUS program. Since then, the network has expanded to include eleven countries and adopted the name Red de Hispanistas de Europa Central. The main objective of the journal is to disseminate the scientific work of researchers-teachers from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and to integrate their research into the international circuit. The journal publishes research papers written in Spanish in this part of Europe, as well as articles written by authors from other countries. The topics addressed are related to various fields of Hispanic studies, including literature, linguistics, didactics, history, etc. Works that have a comparative approach or that are capable of highlighting the relationships between the Hispanic space and that of Central and Eastern Europe are of special interest. Over the years, the journal has added new sections, allowing for the inclusion of interviews with prominent Hispanic personalities related to Central Europe in some way or another, as well as reviews of recent editorial appearances in the field of research in Spanish. The journal is published annually. The journal is published by West University of Timișoara Publishing House and receives occasional support from the Spanish Embassy and the Via Romania Cultura association.
Emilio J. Gallardo-Saborido, Urša Geršak, Maja Šabec (eds.); Giuseppe Riccardi, Ilinca Ilian (dirs.), Literatura en práctica: Retos profesionales de lectura, traducción y edición en la era digital. Manual y cuaderno de actividades. Liubliana: Editorial de
Due to its fundamental contribution to a better understanding of the current and past historical and sociopolitical context, as well as its ability to shape values ​​and develop critical thinking, the teaching of literature has always been a favorite area for innovative initiatives. It is in this field, that of teaching literature written in Spanish in the 21st century, that the LITPRAX project: "Literature in Praxis: Professional challenges of reading, translating and editing in the digital age" falls, bringing together a team of researchers and teachers from Slovenia, Romania, Serbia, and Spain under the framework of an Erasmus+ program developed between early 2021 and mid-2024.
Catalina Iliescu Gheorghiu. Relevancia y traducción. Una retrospectiva con lentes actualizantes. Córdoba: Editorial Comares, 2022, 264 pp.
There has been much talk in recent years about the effervescence of translation studies and, at the same time, about the growing interest that translation research shows in problems and domains that exceed its restricted (and traditional) field, i.e., the critical analysis of the system of equivalences that materialize in the interconnection between source language and target language. Likewise, decades of numerous studies belonging to the latest translation era have come to the epistemological sphere, in which linguistic pragmatics, discourse analysis, cognitivism, and communication theories coincide in their methods and central axioms1, a pioneer of other disciplines that accompany a specific project for literary translation. As is logical, this discipline offers a valuable argumentative foundation to prove the conjunction of complex theories and translation practices.
Gender Role Values in Serbia and Spain: A Contribution to Comparative Gender Sociolinguistic Research
Language and culture are interconnected in such a way that one cannot exist without the other; they cannot exist separately. Since language serves as a symbolic system that expresses culture, comparative research on language inherently involves a comparison of cultures. The aim of this comparative study is to provide insights into recognizing cultural differences between two societies: Serbian society and Spanish society. We will use values that express the distribution of gender roles as an approximation to cultural differences. Using representative data from the European Values Study (EVS) 2018, we will present a comparative analysis of attitudes in these two populations toward gender roles in both public (business, politics) and private (home, child-rearing) spheres. Since both societies are seen as patriarchal, we offer a different interpretation and point out that there has already been a divergence of values. Relatively strict male and female roles, as well as a high appreciation of the heteronormativity of marriage, are still quite present in Serbia while they are significantly questioned in Spain.
Prepositions as a Challenge in Teaching and Learning Spanish by Native Serbian Speakers: the case of por
This paper relies on the fact that learning prepositions presents a significant challenge for Serbian native speakers studying Spanish. The investigation is developed from the methodological principles of contrastive linguistics and its purpose is to undertake a thorough analysis of the preposition por, which seems to be particularly complex, and to draw relevant conclusions for teaching and learning. After examining why prepositions are often a stumbling block in the classroom, as well as the benefits of contrastive analysis and the language awareness approach, syntactic values of the preposition por and its equivalents in Serbian are explained. In the second part of the paper the combinations of prepositions containing por and the equivalent Serbian forms are explored: the analysis is based on a corpus made of four novels. A fundamental distinction with regard to prepositions is the lack of grammatical cases in Spanish versus Serbian; additionally, prepositional combinations are less common in Serbian. In light of this, the introduction of contrastive analysis tasks, through translation, is proposed, because it is reckoned to be valuable for perfecting the linguistic competence of Serbian students
contrastive analysis of the Spanish and Serbian languages
teaching and learning Spanish as a foreign language
Dystopian Imaginaries: The Current Situation of Puerto Rican Women Through the Science Fiction Written by Ana María Fuster Lavín
This article aims to explain briefly some of the reasons for the intermittent evolution of science fiction in Puerto Rico and addresses the causes that lead to the appearance at the beginning of the twenty-first century of narratives of this genre written by women, focusing on the short stories of Ana María Fuster Lavín, who in her collection La marejada de los muertos y otras pandemias (2020) assumes feminist positions with which, in addition to denouncing the inequalities experienced by Puerto Rican women and girls, affirms their importance as subjects in the radical transformation of the dystopian panorama that the island has been experiencing since the fiscal crisis of 2014.
The Multiple Facets of Chile: Memory and Sociopolitical Reflections in La locura de Pinochet by Luis Sepúlveda
La locura de Pinochet (2002), written by Luis Sepúlveda (Chile, 1949 – Spain, 2020), is the starting point of a journey towards the past during which, through memory, the invasive powers at work in the Chilean territory are studied as they progressively led to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. This book, which is a collection of chronicles initially published in the international press, reveals elements of the Chilean reality during and after the dictatorship which transformed the sociopolitical context of the country, having a lasting effect even during the years of the transition to democracy. The aim is to analyse these research axes and their impact on the Chilean territory in geopolitical terms. As a result, historical moments are described which reveal social wounds half a century after the coup d’ Etat on 11th September 1973. Moreover, the unique thought of Luis Sepúlveda will also be examined as he was one of the most emblematic authors of his generation. His literary production as appears in the texts examined raises questions regarding justice and memory, highlighting them as the cornerstone of his work.
Between Memory and Trauma: Post-Memory in Mariana Enriquez’s Short Stories
This article deals with the phenomenon of post-memory related to political and socio-political events in Argentina and its presence in the Argentinian short story. It analyses two texts by the Argentinian writer Mariana Enriquez: “La Hostería” (2016) and “Cuando hablábamos con los muertos” (2009). The main theoretical tool is the theory of postmemory created by Marianne Hirsch and presented in other works on this subject, which is introduced in order to apply it in the subsequent analysis of the texts. In addition, for context, it introduces information about the last Argentine military dictatorship, which serves as a historical and political reference in both texts of Mariana Enriquez. Using these tools, it analyses the reality presented in these stories and the postmemory experienced by the protagonists of the texts due to the trauma that is so present in Argentinian society. The aim is to answer the following questions: what influence do the events experienced by their ancestors have on the lives of the protagonists, how is the postmemory presented in both stories and why are elements of the fantastic used to introduce it into the texts? And most importantly, how do political events influence Argentinian culture and society?
The Critique of Neo-Colonialism and the Rethinking of Collective Identity in Papeles de Pandora (1976)
Twentieth-century Puerto Rican literature was concerned with defining national identity in a historical context marked by the transfer of power between Spain and the United States. In response to attempts at foreign cultural assimilation, writers in the first half of the 20th century tried to delimit the constituent elements of the Puerto Rican national imaginary. However, the second half of the century saw the development of a literature that highlighted the shortcomings of the definition of Puerto Rico that had been proposed by previous generations. Among the voices that called for a change in Puerto Rican literature was Rosario Ferré. This research focuses on eleven of the stories that form part of her first work, Papeles de Pandora (1976), with the aim of analysing the similarities and differences established around the colonial question and the definition of collective identity that had been theorised by the representatives of cultural nationalism in the first half of the 20th century.
An Embodied Cartography: Spaces of Power and Female Border Transgressions in Nadie me verá llorar by Cristina Rivera Garza
This study analyzes the spaces traversed by Matilda Burgos, the protagonist of Nadie me verá llorar (1999) by Cristina Rivera Garza, to explore the power relations between these spaces and the female body of the protagonist. First, domestic spaces, characterized by a univocal power, are examined, where attempts are made to monitor and control the body through discourses and knowledge that reinforce subjection. Then, Foucaultian “heterotopic spaces” such as the brothel and the asylum are analyzed, where marginal and transgressive voices converge, allowing for the expression of alternative and subversive power dynamics. Throughout the study, the relationship between the female body and spaces is explored, showing how the protagonist is not only in these places, but also reconfigures them, tracing her own cartography based on her bodily experience. In this sense, the body becomes a space of resistance that challenges the official cartography and emerges as a means to subvert hegemonic discourses. The research thus aims to highlight how the female body can be an agent of resistance against the impositions of power, drawing new routes and resignifying the places where the body moves and acts.
The Motif of Prison in Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig and Reality by Sergio Bizzio
This article analyzes Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976) and Sergio Bizzio’s Reality (2009), linking both works through the motif of prison. Both Argentinian novels allow us to address different aspects of imprisonment, as Puig’s work is based on a real prison and the dictatorship, while in Bizzio’s world the starting point is a reality show and a terrorist attack. The role of fiction and reality (moreover, the blurring of the boundaries between the two) has a strongly marked presence in both novels: in Puig’s work fiction (the narrative of the films) provides a refuge for the prisoners, while in Bizzio’s the fictional reality of the reality show is the prison itself, from which it is impossible to escape. The analysis is going to focus on the different narrative solutions representing confinement used by the two authors (taking into consideration the role of the cinema in the narrative), and also highlight the difference between the objective of confinement in Kiss of the Spider Woman and in Reality (to exclude or exhibit the prisoners/characters).
Who Has Left Me the Dictatorship as an Inheritance? A Review of Confusing Genealogies in literatura de los hijos of the Southern Cone
The focus of this article will be put on literatura de los hijos [literature of sons and daughters], phenomenon that usually encompasses the writings of authors who lived their childhood and/or teenage years under the dictatorships in Chile (1973-1990) and Argentina (1976- 1983). Likewise, this category could be applied to the literary productions of the generation that experienced the civil-military regime in Uruguay (1973- 1985). In this literary phenomenon, the condition of being hijo can be understood, on the one hand, literally – through family ties with the parents – and, on the other, as a symbolic category, relative to the dictatorial politics that influenced the lives of children as a result of their involvement in state institutions – for example, school – or the involvement of their relatives with or against the dictatorship. In fact, both interpretative keys point to the problem of double inheritance – both of family and national histories – passed from generation to generation, which hijos are facing at the moment. Under these coordinates, the present text proposes a review of possible approaches to the problem of (a)filiation and inheritance in literatura de los hijos of the Southern Cone.
Classical Literature as Cervantes’ Creative Force versus the Apocryphal Don Quixote
The article analyzes the important role of Greco-Latin literature in Cervantes in comparison with Avellaneda’s apocryphal Don Quixote. With the masterful integration, transformation and adaptation of the cultural heritage of Greece and Rome to his own way of making literature, the writer from Alcalá invites us to reflect on themes that also occupied a preferential place in the immortal works of Antiquity, which in his hands are not limited to being a mere library of contrived resources, a sterile reference of faded and stuffy erudition, as is the case with his rival, but are intimately fused with the very essence of the work.
The Mountain and the Fall. Existentialism in Virgilio Piñera’s Literature
This article analyzes the short story “The Fall” by Virgilio Piñera from the point of view of existentialist literature. Philosophy and literature share some common characteristics within the literary text, and existentialism is a current philosophical that emphasizes the relationship between these disciplines. This paper aims to analyze the elements of philosophical existentialism that are present in the Cuban writer's short story. To do so, I will try to demonstrate that Virgilio Piñera's literature has an existentialist basis insofar as it addresses themes and ideas such as the importance of the individual, the absurd, freedom, death, etc. I will base this purpose on the main principles of French existentialism and German existentialism.
Catalina Fuentes Rodríguez y Ester Brenes Peña (eds.). La enseñanza- aprendizaje de conectores y operadores discursivos en ELE. Madrid: Arco/Libros, 2023, 308 pp.
Răzvan Bran. Las oraciones subordinadas y las construcciones sintácticas complejas en español. Consideraciones teóricas y ejercicios prácticos. Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă, 2023, 274 pp.
Author Biography Mihai Enăchescu es profesor titular de lingüística románica y lingüística hispánica (fonética y fonología, historia de la lengua, lexicología y semántica) del Departamento de Lenguas y Literaturas Románicas, Clásicas y Griego Moderno de la Universidad de Bucarest. Es doctor en filología con la tesis ‘Homo’ - ‘vir’ -‘mulier en latín y en las lenguas románicas, publicada en 2012 por la Editorial de la Universidad de Bucarest. Sus áreas de interés cubren la semántica diacrónica y comparada románica, la historia del léxico español y la fraseología, así como la paremiología románicas comparadas y se han concretizado en varios artículos publicados en Rumanía y en el extranjero. Sus publicaciones cubren tres ejes temáticos principales: el primero se relaciona con la semántica, tanto sincrónica como diacrónica y su enfoque es comparativo, entre dos o más lenguas románicas. El segundo eje es la historia del léxico español, y sobre todo la sustitución de arabismos en español por voces de otros orígenes. El tercero se relaciona con la fraseología y paremiología comparadas entre las lenguas románicas.
Anđelka Pejović y Vladimir Karanović (eds.). Estereotipos y prejuicios en/sobre las culturas, literaturas y sociedades del mundo hispánico. Colección Pontes Philologici. Belgrado: Facultad de Filología de la Universidad de Belgrado, 2022, 273 pp.
Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa. Las cartas del Boom. Edición de Carlos Aguirre, Gerald Martin, Javier Munguía y Augusto Wong Campos. Barcelona: Alfaguara, 2023, 568 pp.
Cinema, Re-education and Censorship Around “Ceauşescu’s July Theses”. A Didactic Perspective on Cinematic Transpositions: Canon and Vanishing Points
This article is situated at the moment when Ceauşescu’s cult of person- ality began to consolidate in order to attend to the cinematographic canon that was established during the “July theses”. For this purpose, literary transpositions are analyzed in accordance with the political- cultural guidance of the RCP’s organic ideal within the realm of cinema, its pedagogical and propagandistic role, and the possible discrepancies and vanishing points. In this way, cinematic models of relevance and resistance are presented from a critical perspective of the past, in line with their renegotiation with society after the resettlement period.
Escape Room as a Gamification Proposal for Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language
An escape room is a gamification technique that consists of confronting a group of students with an imaginary confinement situation. During this educational session, students must work as a team and use their reasoning, knowledge, and skills to solve puzzles and challenges related to the curriculum contents in a limited time. This study examines the impact of an escape room on the learning, motivation, classroom climate, behavior, and general satisfaction of second-year students, enrolled at the West University of Timişoara, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Spanish language specialization. In carrying out this experiment, quantitative and qualitative techniques were used and the results showed a significant improvement in classroom participation, flow, sense of well-being, autonomy, and loss of track of time and supported the conclusion that the use of the escape room is fun and motivating for students and facilitates the acquisition of Spanish as a foreign language.
teaching of Spanish as a foreign language
Blending of Virtual Reality and Literature in FL/SFL: literature review
This article presents a literature review of the blending and integration of Virtual Reality (VR) and literary texts in the teaching of FL/SFL. The use of these two educational tools has sparked increased interest in the academic community, but their application and effectiveness vary widely, especially in the specific case of their fusion. The present review, using the PRISMA method, addresses existing acade- mic literature across multiple databases to identify trends, best practices, and challenges in the convergence of VR and literature in the language teaching context. It examines how these technologies can enhance the understanding and appreciation of literature in FL/EFL learning. The article not only provides an overview of the current situation in this field but also highlights the educational possibilities that arise when combining virtual environments with the study of literary texts. Additionally, it addresses the limitations and challenges present in implementing this integration, laying a solid foundation for future research and curriculum development. It is part of a broader doctoral research project in the field, encompassing exploration and educational intervention.
Dislocation in the Oral Discourse of Slovene Students of Spanish as a Foreign Language
Although dislocation is one of the key mechanisms of information structuring in Spanish and reflects as such the linguistic and the pragmatic competence of every speaker, even more so of a learner of Spanish as a foreign language, it usually receives little attention in didactic guidelines and materials. In order to contribute to alleviate such deficiency, in the present study we are looking to determine how university students of Spanish whose native language is Slovene use this structure in their oral discourse. Therefore, we briefly describe the distinctive characteristics of dislocation in Spanish and in Slovene, we examine the place it currently occupies in teaching Spanish as a foreign language and, foremost, we analyse the oral interaction of 58 Slovene-speaking students as documented in the corpus of the PRACOMUL project. We believe that it is only by knowing with which communicative purposes learners use this mechanism, as well as by identifying grammatical inconsistencies and discourse inadequacy issues, that it will be possible to raise awareness about the importance of this and other information structuring means and progress toward a more systematic and pragmatically oriented treatment in their teaching and learning in Spanish as a foreign language.
Parsimony and Poverty: Linguistic Reflections. A Spanish – Romanian Comparative View
Metaphors, as well as sayings and idioms which add colour to language, have been the favourite means of expression to illustrate the speaker’s opinions, attitudes and, above all, their preoccupations. The modern human life revolves around his economic means so much so that, since the invention of money as a means of trade, which came to substitute the barter, it has become something of great interest to individuals. Money and everything associated with the material side of the human existence have not been left aside, but added to the great repertoire of idiomatic expressions in the field of languages, with these familiar formulas being adapted to the reality of each epoch as an approachable and expressive way of telling general truths. Set phrases, such as idioms, convey true history lessons as they preserve images of other bygone times, revealing different influences. Thus, a comparative study between the two related languages (Romanian and Spanish) becomes interesting, as it reveals common mindsets as well as different ways of perceiving the extra-linguistic reality. Our paper aims at presenting and explaining, in a contrastive-comparative approach, a corpus of lexemes and idioms excerpted from the two languages, circumscribed to the lexical field of money; the selection of the corpus was based on the moral/ethical value of its elements.
Phraseological units in Eduardo Mendoza’s Sin noticias de Gurb and Their Equivalence in Italian, French and Romanian
This article aims to analyse the phraseologisms in the Spanish novel Sin noticias de Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza and their equivalence in three Romance languages (Italian, French and Romanian). We shall focus on the degrees of equivalence in order to identify the phraseological simi- larities and differences between the four Romance languages under analysis. Further- more, taking into account the degrees of equivalence identified by Corpas Pastor (2003) in the translation process, our study also tries to set out a more detailed approach of this typology. The quantitative and quali- tative analyses reveal that in most cases the Spanish UFs have phraseological counter- parts in the other three languages and, there- fore, they admit a total or partial equivalence in translation. On the other hand, null equivalence, paraphrases, false friends, and other types of errors occur less frequently. In conclusion, the present study highlights not only the similarities in the Romance phraseology, but also the expressiveness and correctness of the three versions.
Antonio de Guevara and the Construction of the “Ideal Prince” Archetype, as Outlined in the Dial of Princes
In the present paper, our aim is to show how Antonio de Guevara understood the notion or archetype of the “ideal prince”. Concurrently, we intend to undertake a critical reevaluation of the author’s underlying motivation in composing his notable work, Dial of Princes, which is, fundamentally, a fictional biography of the emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius. In his narrative discourse, the Franciscan makes use of the Christian creed and the cultural heritage of the Greco-Roman world to present a political vision that legitimated the monarch’s power. However, the ruler had to meet certain criteria to be worth of his position, such as being virtuous in every aspect of his daily life ― but more so in what concerns the governance of the republic ―, caring for his people, being pious and judging properly. Besides, the ideal prince must always seek peace and avoid war or conquest. To achieve this goal, he should follow the counsel of wise people and not make decisions that would contradict morality.
Author’s Intention and Autofiction in Reinaldo Arenas’ Poetics
The objective of this article is to reflect on the conception of autofiction as a form of discourse and the tension that is established with the author’s intention and the reception processes. The article analyzes different narrative processes in the work of the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas that operate in an autofictional reading of his work as a whole. Starting from the thesis of the existence of a final phase of writing in which the author’s intention focuses on the construction of a self-referential reading of all his work, the article reviews the textual practices that rewrite and position his literature under a necessary autofictional perspective. In this way, the article reflects on the operability of both the author’s intention and the reception processes in the construction of a self-referential literature.
Cervantes and the Cave of Montesinos: Classical Quotations and Allusions. Philological Study of Chapters XXIII and XXIV of the Second Part
In chapters 23 and 24 of the 1615 edition on the occasion of Don Quixote’s descent into the cave of Montesinos, it can be established with certain evidence how Cervantes usually writes under literary authorities that support and give luminosity to all his writing. Thanks to such a recreation of the previous tradition, he manages to build a unique, classic, universal work that, by revitalizing and relying on themes, myths and literary assumptions of its predecessors, grows into the greatest monument of Hispanic literature.
Ángela Graupera, The Great Crime. What I Saw During the War. A View from Serbia
In this article we present the book The Great Crime. What I Saw During the War (1935) by the Catalan writer and journalist Ángela Graupera. This social activist and campaigner for women’s and workers’ rights worked as a Red Cross nurse in Serbia during the First World War. While working in the military hospital in Nish, Graupera described her daily life and the horrors of war, the typhus and the cold suffered by the combatants and the population, and raised an outcry against the barbarity of all wars. With our study, we want to make the legacy of this extraordinary woman known and free her from the unjust oblivion in which she finds herself today.
The (in)visible confession of Unamuno, between María Zambrano and Rosa Chacel
Both María Zambrano and Rosa Chacel developed specific studies on confession. A certain coincidence between their postulates indicates that both authors considered that literary genre as an expression of a new type of knowledge, detached from rationalist excesses, no longer legitimized by ocularcentric erudition, but by the knowledge of one’s own self and specifically of the “invisible” aspects of his identity (from the soul to eros). In this way it’s significant that both writers referred to the case of Unamuno as symptomatic of the limits that the confession had in the Spanish canon. The similarity of their observations on the difficulty of the genre in the Basque author, then allows us to investigate the common objective of Zambrano and Chacel in relation to resolving the supposedly failed emergence of the confession within the Hispanic literary tradition.
Juan Octavio Prenz y Omar Lara promoters of literary flows: Latin America-Yugoslavia-Romania
This article analyses the intellectual and literary activity carried out by poets Juan Octavio Prenz and Omar Lara as promoters both of Latin American literature in Central Europe -especially in Romania and Yugoslavia- and of these countries’ literatures in Latin America. The timespan covered goes from 1977 -when Prenz and Lara first met- to more recent times. More specifically, the article focuses on the works published with KOV, Vršac’s publishing house, on the different stages of the journal Trilce -directed by Omar Lara- and the establishment of LAR (Reunited American Literature) publishing house.