Professor Loira was truly skilled in the subject. I had taken Spanish classes before, but never really learned the breath of Spanish culture. This class helped me understand the events that led up to contemporary society and the Spanish world. The class itself was engaging, but not too tough. The weekly assignments and readings are actually interesting and they help with understanding the content. The professor's lectures are entertaining and captivating. Additionally the professor is really understanding of people's situations and will provide accommodations if needed. I highly recommend this class for anyone who is looking for an interesting class to take.

Professor Patiño made the class wonderful. His class was the only one that I was genuinely always looking forward to. He engages with the class, makes 10/10 jokes, and cares for the students. His way of teaching should be taught to the rest of the UCLA faculty.

There is a weekly paper for this class of around 500 words. The goal of this paper is to assess how well you understood the assigned reading. The readings range from (around) 40-70 pages per week. During the week of finals, he gave us a movie to watch and write about instead of something to read. If you are not big on papers/writing, brace yourself.

TA Eduardo was also an amazing person. He always made sure to ask how we were feeling, and on a certain occasion baked us cookies! It was made clear that we should put our mental health first in this class.

All in all, this was a very enjoyable class. I'd take a class with Professor Patiño every quarter if I could. Alas, life does not work out how we want it to, and I am an engineering major.

Professor Patino is a 10/10 teacher. He made lectures really enjoyable and often made funny jokes. His tests were not hard at all (you just have to skim the slides and fill out the study guide and you will be more than fine). A 500 word short paper on a reading is due every week, which normally took me about 6 hours per week with the reading included. Overall, this was a pretty easy class and I would recommend everybody to take it with him.

I really enjoyed this class. If you are pursuing a Spanish minor or just need the GE, I would definitely recommend this class. The workload was very reasonable, consisting of ~1-1.5hrs of reading a week coupled with a short essay prompt of min 500 words. The essays were not graded based on percentages, instead based on S+, S, and S-, and there was no clear-cut rubric, just a prompt. As long as you actually tried on the essay, you'd be fine. The lectures can feel very long, but they are sometimes very interesting, and the professor will make jokes at times and also give you a five minute break in the middle of class. Lectures are not mandatory, and all the slides are posted alongside his audio recording for the lesson. I had a great time in discussion, too. You can choose to enroll in a Spanish-speaking discussion or an English one. As for the tests, there were only two. The midterm covered half the course, and the final covered the second half, not cumulative. You're given study guides well in advance of each test, and if you do them, the exams are super easy. Overall, I looked forward to going to this class, and it has definitely been a highlight so far.

The tests were a bit difficult as they often were aimed at analyzing concepts of social constructs with relation to cultural practices or products of a time period. However, this class was very engaging and made me reconsider a lot about what I know about not just Iberian, (and Hispanic cultures in general), but also reconsidering the implications of what I already know about nearly... well everything. This class will have your mind blown. The readings can seem like a lot, but you could honestly just skim through them. The response papers are more so your conception of a paper with a prompt provided to guide you. As long as you take these reponse papers seriously, which are mainly graded for completion, then you will do great on the tests. Just make sure to turn in all your reponse papers. Professor Loira is super amazing, very funny, and dresses really cool. He will have you engage with your education in a way that you may not have before. In the last lecture, everyone gave him a round of applause for how incredible of a professor he was. I would definitely take another course with him again.

Professor Loira was an amazing professor. I never even write bruinwalk reviews but I just had to for him because this might've been one of the best classes I've taken at UCLA. Not only a pretty easy and straightforward GE, but I actually really enjoyed the material and I'm not a history person at all. The organization of his lectures were very engaging and interesting, I was never bored and it was easy to follow along. Short papers sometimes included a relatively heavy reading but they were easy to get done and really helped to further my understanding in the material. Study guides provided by the professor really helped me prepare for the exams which were also very straight forward and never included anything unexpected. Overall a great class that I really enjoyed.

Lectures aren't mandatory but extremely helpful to study for midterm and final. Midterm and final are short response questions which are exactly from lectures and slides. Lectures are recorded and extremely easy to follow along, the only homework is one short paper per week based on readings. Professor is very helpful and understanding.