Our day-to-day life in Barcelona

by Pat Casey, OIEC Instructor

Mt. Hood Community College

So how do things operate on a day-to-day basis here in Barcelona? Our partner, Barcelona SAE http://www.barcelonasae.com offers a variety of student programs both at their own facility and at other institutions in town including University of Barcelona, Universidad de Pompeu Fabua, and Universidad Autonómia de Barcelona.

BIC's offices and most Barcelona 

SAE classrooms are on the top floor

Barcelona International College

(BIC)/Barcelona SAE Headquarters

in the Eixample district

For our Oregon International Education Consortium (OIEC) group, Barcelona SAE created a custom program where two OIEC faculty (Pat Casey from Mt. Hood C.C. and Sarah Bentley from Portland C.C.) teach History, Media, and Spanish Literature courses, and Barcelona SAE faculty offer Spanish language and Spanish Life and Culture classes. As with all OIEC offerings, all Barcelona classes transfer seamlessly to students’ home colleges, so they can fulfill core requirements while studying in Europe. Just like back home, a normal course load is 12 hours per term, which works out to be three or four different classes.

History students Lauren Fedance, Brenda Pyle, Justin Hastay,
Erin Brownlee, Martine Daley, and Tiffany Lewelling in
Rm 304, their home away from home every Monday and
Wednesday morning

BIC Offices & classrooms

Classes meet Mondays through Thursdays so weekend travel is very much an option. So far term students (and faculty!) have visited London, Dublin, Galway, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Sevilla, Córdoba, Granada, Madrid, San Sebastián, Gibraltar, Lisbon, Lyon, München, Tangier, and Fez, Morocco – so we’ve become quite adept at local rail and air transport!

Spanish Life & Culture students Erin 

Brownlee and Brenda Pyle riding 

the Metro on their way to a

presentation at a Spanish Civil War 

bomb shelter

The bulk of the Spanish Life and Culture classes meet around town, using the city as a classroom. Examples include Barcelona’s Bari Gòtic (Gothic Quarter); the Camp Nou Fútbol (Soccer) Stadium -- home to Barcelona’s famous FC Barça soccer team; a Spanish Civil War bomb shelter in the Proble Sec neighborhood; a day trip to the Salvador Dalí Museum in the nearby town of Figures; and a Spanish and Catalan cooking (and eating!) class offered at a cooking school.

Classrooms are at the Barcelona SAE/Barcelona International College headquarters on Carrier Diputació, in Barcelona’s very central Eixample district. The building is a three minute walk from the Rocafort metro (subway) station as well as several bus lines, and is a 15 minute walk from Plaça Catalunya, the very heart of town.

Barcelona historian and SAE Prof. Layla
Dworkin explaining the Italian Air Force
bombing campaign against Barcelona
during the Spanish Civil War 

Prof. Dworkin, a local tour guide as well as historian, 

arranged a special visit inside Refugio 307, a recently 

restored Spanish Civil War air raid shelter.

Student housing is in furnished apartments around town; typically four share a two-bedroom flat and all apartments are either walking distance to Barcelona International College or to mass transit; no student is more than 15 or 20 minutes from the classrooms. The apartments all have wireless internet and washing machines, and students prepare their own meals.

All photos by Pat Casey

Media & Society students Kristin Young,  Shanayia Munoz, 

Selena Tamme-Juarez, Austin Baranko, and Maleia Sheldon 

atop Barcelona's Caixa Forum after visiting an exhibition on 

groundbreaking early filmmaker Georges Melies.