I have never felt so genuinely motivated to invest my maximum effort into this class. He gives study guides that cover anything that could appear in the exams, which have been extremely helpful. I would recommend anyone who takes this class to start filling in the study guides' questions on Word/Google docs on the very first lecture alongside the slides. Please continue to do so during every single lecture and discussion session, especially while your memory about the topics' details are still fresh. It is definitely the most effective way to extract the most important information to ace the exam than just taking notes without a clear direction. I stopped taking any notes after the first two days of class and focused on the study guides for the exams.

You also have short essays (400-500 words) of different readings to turn in every week. Although he allows students to turn in 2 reading assignments late without penalizations, try to finish them by the due date regardless. Parts of the assigned readings are usually included in the lecture slides, it is very important that you acquire the basic ideas of these readings to understand the lecture thoroughly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

This was a fantastic class, easily my favorite at UCLA so far. There were readings every week from different sources, and we had short papers to go along with them. The prompts were written in such a way that gets you to really think about what you read, which made these assignments fruitful. At lecture I just sat there and absorbed what the professor was saying, as the information that you need for the exams is all on the slides, which were available on CCLE. The professor seemed really excited to teach us about the material, which made lectures engaging and encouraged students to participate, making for an overall enriching learning environment.

I loved this class and professor so so much. I usually am not a history person at all but this class was so interesting thanks to the lectures. You only have to write a 500 word essay per week (due b4 tuesday lecture) and attend discussion. You can also turn in two papers late (just before the end of the quarter) without penalty. As long as you pay attention during lecture, the midterm and final were very easy. I also recommend this class if you need diversity/GE credit. This class made me want to pursue a Spanish minor :)

I LOVED this class so so much. Professor Patino Loira is literally one of the kindest, most intelligent, and caring professors I've had, and he genuinely wants the class to have a collaborative and positive aura all the time. The lectures aren't mandatory which can be nice because if there is a day where you just don't think you can make it he always posts the recordings of the audio to the lectures as well as the slides so you can just review what happened in lecture on your own time. The exams (there are only 2) were really clear and if you study the study guides that he gives out, you will be totally fine and most people in my discussion section have a high A. There are a total of 8 short papers you have to submit (it's usually one per week) which was annoying at times but thats literally the only hard part of the class and some of the readings were honestly really interesting! I also had an absolutely amazing TA for this class so it might be different if you have a different TA but if you're looking for a fun GE I loved this class!