The+Polish+students+in+Granada

The Polish student in Spain- Granada
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One of the underlying themes of our visit to Spain as part of the project “All Equal at European schools” was tolerance in a broad sense of the word. Considering that country’s history and its cultural and ethnic diversity, tolerance plays an important role there. The tour participants noticed signs of tolerance in architecture, the way people dress, in restaurants and other food establishments and in the activities of IES Fernando de los Rios in Fuente Vaqueros, which was our host school. The culture, tradition and language of Spain are very diversified. For instance, while Castilian Spanish is the official language of the entire country, other regional languages such as Basque, Catalan or Galician are co-official with Spanish and widely spoken in their respective provinces. The mixing of cultures (European and Oriental) as well as religions (Catholicism and Islam) is particularly noticeable in Andalusia in southern Spain. A strong Arabic influence can be seen in architecture, visual and fine art, local dress (a large Muslim minority). At the same time this is the most Catholic region of Spain, where Christian festivals are celebrated with great fervor by the majority of population and signs and symbols of the Catholic faith are visible at every step. The history of Spain has had a great impact on the current co-existence of various nationalities such as Basques, Catalans and Romanis who all have a strong sense of their own identity and culture.

The school we visited is situated in the city of Granada. The city and its surrounding area are an agricultural region. The economic status of the local people is rather low when compared to the national average way of life. As many of its pupils are the so-called difficult youth, IES Fernando de los Rios in Fuente Vaqueros runs a community after-school club for the students form underprivileged families. In view of the low socio-economic status of the local population, current economic crisis and uncertain future, dealing with cultural diversity requires a great deal of tolerance and considerable effort on the part of the headmistress and teachers of the school, which strives to provide equal educational opportunities to all its students.

Spanish people like going out and spending time with friends. They are very sociable and open-hearted and tend to eat out quite often. Singing and dancing to background music in restaurants is a popular pastime. It is worth adding that in Spanish culture a working woman is not a particularly welcome sight, hence career development outside professions such as teaching is quite difficult for women. Especially among the Romani population a woman’s status is rather low. Arranged marriages, finishing education at the age of 14, low labour market activity are predominant. media type="custom" key="20553778"media type="custom" key="20553780"