In practice, the student who is a native speaker of Spanish has the opportunity to master three Romance languages, their literature and culture. The selection can be made between languages with a major influence or, as it is the case of Romanian, of a language that could offer interesting academic and work perspectives. Besides the languages that embody a statistical majority (Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian), the student can pick another Romance language, as a complementary object of study.

But the BA in Romance Philology doesn’t factually carry out the function of a regular language school. It puts forward a study plan that is more complex and more interesting, offering detailed insight of the literary and cultural production, in a historical and geographical sense, searching for fingerprints that each language has left across space and time. It also analyses the interactions between these languages and cultures as they came in close contact during the time. The comparative method inside the study of Romance languages allows a global overview of common traditions and customs among Romance populations which helps to properly target their origins and the particular phenomena that brought about the different development of all these languages – with all their literary and cultural productions.

How did the European languages form? Who were the troubadours? What was the meaning of the medieval knights and the Holy Grail? In exactly what moment and context was love born, as we understand it today? Which are the literary and cultural traditions that led to Dante’s ‘Divina Comedia’? To Cervante’s Don Quixote? To Flaubert’s Madame Bovary? When, how and why was the idea of Europe as a common cultural ground born?