60s/70s Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez was a household name while I was growing up. My parents used to tell me stories about the one time they went to his concert, and one of their friends kept requesting “Ojalá!” (one of his most popular songs) by yelling the title constantly from the audience. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I actually listened to his music and fell in love with it.
Today’s blog post brings a music and television recommendation all in one.
Luis Miguel: La Serie is a Netflix drama series that follows the life of legendary Mexican singer Luis Miguel throughout his early life and rise to superstardom. This show intimately explores Luis Miguel’s private life, focusing on the challenges he went through to balance his public image with his relationships with friends and family. With beautiful camerawork, fun 80s aesthetics, and a heavy dose of LuisMi’s most popular songs, this series keeps you hooked from beginning to end. It’s no surprise that it has become a favorite in the Spanish-speaking world.
Luis Miguel is currently available on Netflix. Keep an eye out for the third season, coming out today (October 28th)!
Or, if you’re just looking for something to listen to, here are some of my favorite Luis Miguel songs:
Headed into the break but still want to practice your Spanish? Check out these six Spanish short films for quick and easy immersion! Each film is directed and filmed for and by native Spanish speakers, and they come from a wide range of countries. Many of the shorts are also favorites at film festivals around the world! Make sure to check out Uno by Javier Marco. For more Spanish shorts, check out Short of the Week, and sort by country to find more foreign language short films.
Detrás Del Espejo (Behind the Mirrors) by Julio O. Ramos
Best for: Beginners
Genre: Action
Location: Peru
Watch for: an exciting short with a dramatic end
I was recently asked what the best apps for learning Spanish were, and since I haven’t learned Spanish through apps in a while, I wasn’t sure. So, I dove back into the world of language-learning apps to see if anything had changed.
Much of the cast during a scene. Courtesy of Netflix.
Looking for a new Spanish tv show filled with dramatic teenagers and a series of incredibly unlikely but intriguing events? Elite has you covered.
Netflix released season 1 of Elite in 2018, and although being a Spanish show, it gained popularity around the world. Elite follows 3 scholarship students from a working-class part of town as they begin attending Las Encinas, a rich private high school, for Spain’s most elite. This parallels flashforwards to the main character’s mysterious murder. Throughout the series, viewers are watching the events that led up to the killing along with police interrogations following the murder. This leads a viewer to constantly ponder who was killed, who was the killer, and what was their motive.
Elite has also been recognized for the diversity of its characters and storylines, taking on tough subjects especially for a dramatic teen tv show. There’s an inclusion of a gay storyline between two male characters, and their struggle to be accepted by one boy’s Muslim family. Additionally, one girl struggles with her religious identity when her school requires her not to wear a hijab to school. One main character even deals with the trials of being HIV-positive for the rest of their life.
Elite tries to cover a large variety of themes, from those mentioned above, to class and race struggles. The show has been criticized for often glossing over these themes in order to focus on flashy drama. However, in comparison to other shows of the same genre, it still introduces many issues relevant to young people of this time.
Elite does a good job of developing its characters as well. Many tropes are used at the beginning of the show, but it soon becomes clear that each character has a rich and interesting backstory explaining their actions as the show progresses.
Samuel during the murder scene that the show is focused on. Courtesy of Netflix.
For Spanish-language learners, Elite offers great practice. The show is meant for native Spanish speakers and uses Spain-centric Spanish. Characters give beautiful dialogues, some slow and some fast. For any level of Spanish learner, Elite offers a learning opportunity. Beginners may opt to listen in Spanish but use English subtitles, intermediates may rely on Spanish subtitles, and expert speakers can face a challenge by watching the show completely subtitle-free.
SpanishDict is a super helpful English-Spanish Translator website, specializing in helping English speakers learn Spanish. The app is very comprehenisze with its definitions, offering examples, pronounciation help, a conjugation chart, popular phrases, a thesaurus section, and examples from the web.
The website also has hundreds of articles explaining each type of conjugation, common grammar mistakes, and a range of other issues faced by native English speakers while learning the language. A new section of the website now also offers vocabulary practice.
A screenshot of a popular article detailing the difference between “ser” and “estar”.
Unlike Google Translate, SpanishDict can translate words and entire phrases. When translating a word, the site will pull up a dictionary-styled page explaining each definition for the word and when to use each one. This prevents beginner speakers from making mistakes when translating a word such as “fly,” which has very distinct meanings between the noun and verb form. Additionally, when translating entire phrases, SpanishDict gives you the results of Microsoft, SDL, and PROMT. In my experience, SpanishDict has yet to mistranslate any word or phrase I’ve entered, and it’s my go to for looking up a Spanish word I don’t know.
The newest addition to the SpanishDict website offers basic vocabulary exercises. The majority of “flashcards” are grouped by topic, such as ‘animals’ or ‘foods’, but may be useful for an introductory Spanish learner.
This masterpiece by Roberto Bolaño centers around a group of radical poets and their hungry, crazy, and romantic lives in Mexico City. It’s got lesbians, mystery suicides, schizophrenics, and a lot of jaw-dropping stories. It’s worth to struggle with the Spanish because Bolaño is a masterful wordsmith, but this book will be most enjoyable for advanced Spanish readers.
Radio Ambulante is an award-winning podcast series which tells Latin American stories, covering a range of issues from immigration to bee-keeping. They have thousands of episodes to choose from, allowing listeners to filter by country, topic, and length. Most episodes are both in Spanish and English, which makes Radio Ambulante suitable for both beginners and advanced Spanish students.
With sections ranging from beginner to advanced, this podcast covers a wide variety of topics, most of which center around using Spanish in everyday life. The episodes are mostly 10-15 minutes long and gradually move from using some English to explain ideas to speaking exclusively in Spanish. The hosts do a great job of explaining their ideas and topics for every level learner.
This brand-new Netflix telenovela, already critically and popularly acclaimed, revolves around a powerful family in Mexico City, attempting to preserve its image after the father’s mistress hangs herself from the family’s house, uncovering the family’s dirty secrets. While inhabiting the best tradition of hyperbolic and postmodern Mexican telenovelas, this series offers an original dark comedy twist. The spoken Spanish is clear yet abundant in colloquialisms.
