Written by Dr Eoin Barrett.
The 2025 Leaving Certificate Spanish Higher Level paper was well received by Yeats students. It was largely consistent with recent years in terms of the level of difficulty encountered. However, the Listening contained some tricky elements and required some quite specific details in places for full marks.
Section A
The Prescribed Literature option on Gabriel García Márquez’s Relato de un náufrago, the passage selected describes a scene when an exhausted Luis Alejandro Velasco alternates between the memory of his time in Mobile before the shipwreck, and his current reality, adrift on a life raft, as well as an encounter with a turtle.
This year’s ‘Journalistic Text’ was entitled ‘¡España es diferente!’, and examined some of the culture shocks that foreign visitors experience when they are in Spain, including differing cultural attitudes towards showing affection, and conventions around personal space, timetables, and attitudes to punctuality.
Question 1 (a-e) should have got most students off to a nice start, as the questions were clear, and key words in the questions provided guidance to candidates in terms of identifying the passages that contained the relevant answers, and there weren’t too many difficult terms to work out.
Question 2 should have been accessible for students who got plenty of practice with this type of question, though it should be noted that this year, for all three questions, the number of words in the question was different to the number of words in the answer.
(a) aún se escucha (1) – todavía existe
(b) causa asombro (2) – sorprende
(c) destacan (5) – llaman la atención
In Question 3, as always, it was important that students provided the English equivalent to the phrases indicated by referring back to the article for context. The passages chosen were reasonable, though there were some tricky terms, such as the verb “suceder” (to happen) used in the conditional, or the verb ‘pensar’ used to mean ‘plan’ when followed by an infinitive.
(a) En Alemania eso jamás sucedería (para 2) – In Germany that would never happen.
(b) …ahora piensa quedarse en España para siempre. (para 3) – and now he is planning to stay in Spain forever.
(c) …además, los trenes de alta velocidad son los más puntuales… (para 4) – …furthermore, the high-speed trains are the most punctual…
Question 4 offered two short options to paraphrase in Spanish:
- ‘cree que es una cosa bonita’
piensa/opina que es algo/un aspecto/un rasgo lindo/hermoso/atractivo
- ‘le cuesta mucho’
es/resulta muy difícil/complicado/duro para él
Both options were easy to understand, and had been seen multiple times in class, but students may have had to pause to think of equivalent Spanish phrases that conveyed a similar meaning.
The Section A short comprehension questions were generally accessible, though this year I felt that there were one or two tricky elements present when compared to previous years. The first highlighted the success of San Cristóbal de la Laguna in winning the European Union’s Accessible City Prize for 2024. For part (ii), students needed to recognise that ‘semáforos’ meant ‘traffic lights’ to gain full marks, though they should have been able to work it out from the context.
The second short comprehension focused on the explosion in popularity of Padel in Ireland, and again here it was mostly straightforward, though for part (i) students needed to work out that ‘una amplia variedad de entornos’ meant ‘a wide range/variety of venues/settings’.
Section B
The long comprehension task featured an article on the growth in popularity of influencers generated by Artificial Intelligence, focusing specifically on the figure of AI fashion and lifestyle influencer Alba Renai, especially the advantages she offers over traditional human influencers.
Questions 1 and 3 (synonyms), which require students to find words or phrases in the text equivalent to those provided in the question, were definitely a bit tough in places, and again here the number of words in the question was not necessarily the same as the number of words needed for the answer. As always, students had to ensure that they only included the exact equivalent word or phrase to gain the marks.
1.
(a) empiezan a tener – comienzan a ejercer (para 1)
(b) le encantan – es apasionada de (para 2)
(c) un carácter abierto – una personalidad extrovertida (para 4)
(d) explica los obstáculos – da a conocer los problemas (para 5)
(e) considerando – teniendo en cuenta (para 7)
3.
(a) representante – portavoz (para 3)
(b) aprecia – respeta (para 4)
(c) colaborar – trabajar (para 5)
(d) desplazarse – viajar (para 6)
(e) contesta – opina/responde (para 7)
The phrases to be translated in Q.2 were manageable. They required some specific vocabulary, but these words should have been possible to work out from the context. Also,
(a) Es guapísima, elegante y muy maja.
She is very beautiful, elegant/stylish and very nice.
(b) Alba parece salida de una película de ciencia ficción
Alba seems like someone (who came) out of a science fiction movie
(c) … cobran unos ocho mil euros por publicación.
…they charge around eight thousand euros per post
Students should also have done well in Q. 4, provided they included as much detail as they recognised as being relevant to the question.
The Opinion Piece titles were as follows:
(a) Las redes sociales son más interesantes que la vida real.
Social media are more interesting than real life.
(b) La inteligencia artificial tiene la capacidad de hacerlo todo.
Artificial intelligence is capable of doing everything
(c) Los trabajos tradicionales son los más importantes.
Traditional jobs are the most important ones.
These titles were clear and easy to understand, and really offered students plenty of choice and scope for expression. While title (b) would have rewarded students who prepared to write specifically on AI, the other titles were more general, and provided scope for students to adapt material prepared for the Oral Exam, and to incorporate personal examples to illustrate their points.
These essay titles once again highlighted the benefit of students developing their writing skills so that they can brainstorm and develop arguments in exam conditions, rather than attempting to have a few essays memorised in the hope of fitting one of them to the title.
Section C
In Section C, the Dialogue Construction involved a scenario in which you are talking to your Spanish friend Jorge about his plans to study abroad next year. Most of the vocabulary required here should have been familiar to students from their Christmas reading tasks, their preparations for the Orals, and previous years’ exam tasks.
However, in contrast with previous years’ dialogues, this year the ‘other side’ of the dialogue did not provide students with much vocabulary that they needed for their side. Candidates needed to pay very careful attention to the various Indicative verb tenses required for full marks (Present, Preterite, Present Perfect, Conditional and Future), as well as many of the grammar topics explored in Essential Spanish Grammar Vols I & II, but this year there was no requirement to use a Subjunctive!
The Letter/Email option related to the problem of over-tourism in Spain. This is a very topical issue, perhaps one that students and teachers might have anticipated appearing as a long comprehension at some point, but it turned up in the Letter/Email this year, and may have worked as a viable option for students who had prepared an Opinion Piece on the topic, though once again I felt the Dialogue was still the better option.
The Diary Entry invited the candidate to imagine that they were attending the Benicassim Music Festival with some friends. As with previous years, this task was very open-ended in terms of what it asked you to express, and should not have posed difficulties for students who had plenty of practice with previous years’ tasks, and who had revised the sample answers provided.
The Note option asked students to imagine that they are staying at a student residence at the University of Málaga, and need to leave a note for the receptionist, Clara. While this year’s note was reasonably accessible, I still feel that the Diary Entry provided students with more scope and freedom to adapt material prepared in advance.
The Listening test was typically varied in terms of the topics examined, and was on a par with previous years’ papers in terms of difficulty, but should still have been manageable for students who had a broad range of vocabulary, and who got plenty of practice with past and mock papers in the run-up to the exam. While the pace of the audio was reasonable, I felt that certain questions required brief and very specific details in order to gain the marks, and there was certainly some vocabulary that would have proved challenging even for very good higher-level students.
The paper featured an ad for a Silent Disco Tour, an interview with legendary Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar, and an interview with artistic skater Paula Romaguera.
The first descriptive passage detailed a study undertaken at the University of Alicante, which found that the month or season of your birth can have a concrete influence on your health, personality, and even your height.
The second descriptive passage focused on the disruption caused to local residents arising from concerts being held at the recently refurbished Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid.
Students seemed to find the weather question very manageable this year, but many commented that the final section, about a Spanish Maori clan in New Zealand, was a bit strange and quite difficult to understand, and threw up some challenging questions requiring quite specific vocabulary.
All in all, Yeats students should have been really pleased with the 2025 Spanish Higher Level exam, and should rest easy now and enjoy the summer. ¡Viva el verano!
