ORIENTATION IN EL ESPINAR

Text by Joshua Berlinger

Tufts University

Orientation in El Espinar was three of the busiest days of my life.  I arrived after about 15 hours of travel from LA to meet Senzeni and Paco, the program coordinators, at the airport, and was promptly driven to the CIEE Legal Housing by Senzeni (Paco had to wait for Sarah, another one of the Legal Studies students who had not arrived).  I quickly learned that although I was going to the apartment, we would only be briefly eating breakfast there and would head straight up to El Espinar for our orientation.  Once we arrived, we had our first full meal, where we got to enjoy David’s delicious cooking for the first time.  Around 3pm, after lunch, we started some icebreakers and learned about the course.  We soon learned that we would be doing the first three sessions of our Spanish Legal Language class with Cristina.

The second day, we watched the film Mar Adentro, starring Javier Bardem, which stemmed into our first thematic discussion of euthanasia and Spanish law. We discussed both the moral and legal conflict, and the difference and similarities that exist in this debate in both the United States and Spain.  Through this we then stemmed into a discussion of the concepts of the Spanish Judicial system, and got an introduction and insight into how the Spanish Legal system works. 

Wednesday was our final day in El Espinar, we started by learning the rights of foreigners in Spain (which we all found very applicable), and then learned more Spanish legal language and terminology.  At the end, Senzeni and Paco discussed what we would be doing for the next few days, and how we should start looking at courses, and grabbed a fantastic lunch, took a few pictures, said goodbye to El Espinar, and hit the road for Madrid where we met Sabela, a Law Professor at Universidad Carlos III, who will be our Resident Assistant during our stay in Madrid.