Immersion in Iberia
Students Reign in Spain with Study-Abroad Program
Eleven students spent three weeks at the Universidad Jaume I in Castellón de la Plana (Valencia), Spain, with Professor Rosemary Barberet of the Sociology Department for the study-abroad program “Por la Justicia Social: Crime Victims in Comparative Context.” As designed by Dr. Barberet, who has 15 years of experience in academic criminology in Spain, the program required fluency in Spanish and featured many opportunities for immersion in the local culture.
The students came from various majors — Criminal Justice, Criminology, Forensic Psychology, Political Science, International Criminal Justice, and English — and included 10 young women and one young man. Students were all of Hispanic heritage and were from the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island; none had been to Spain before. Students quickly discovered that their Spanish language skills were valuable for immersion in Spanish culture and that their navigation skills learned in New York City could be usefully applied to a foreign setting.
The course taught was SOC/CRJ 236 Victimology, which was transformed into a comparative victimology course, comparing the experiences of the United States to Spain and Europe. Students and their professor lived in the university dormitory on campus and attended class at the faculty of law, where criminal law and criminal procedure professors from the Universidad Jaume I complemented Dr. Barberet’s teaching with material on the role of the victim in the Spanish legal system. Classes were taught in both Spanish and English, and students had the option of completing assignments in either Spanish or English.
The Spanish law school partners, led by Professor of Criminal Law Caty Vidales, had competitively selected 10 of their own criminology undergraduates to audit the entire course. This feature of the class made for great comparative discussions in the classroom, facilitated language acquisition on both sides, and promoted what may be lasting friendships between American and Spanish students. Spanish criminology majors take a compulsory course in “Criminological English” and thus are expected to have a basic knowledge of English. However, classes in Spain are usually too large to be very participatory and the Spanish students were surprised to be asked to contribute routinely to discussions and were quite interested in the academic experiences of our students as well as their daily life in New York.
Students visited police headquarters including the Policía Nacional headquarters in Castellón, the Guardia Civil’s crime lab, and the local police and fire headquarters. They also visited the traffic safety school set up for the city´s grade school children, which is a small circuit that replicates city streets that children traverse in small cars, following traffic laws. Students visited the 24-hour domestic violence center and also observed court trials. Longer field trips included an overnight excursion to Albacete for a Spanish criminology research symposium, sponsored by the Spanish Society for Criminological Research; and a day trip to Valencia, where students visited the Superior Court of Justice in Valencia. Controversial anti-corruption cases are currently being tried there, and students had the opportunity to meet the President of the Court, Judge Pilar de la Oliva, the first woman in Spain ever to hold that post. Students were able not only to observe and absorb, but over time became increasingly adept at asking very good, incisive questions.
Spain is an ideal site for expanding our U.S.-based knowledge about crime victims. Besides victims of common crimes, there are active groups of victims of Basque terrorism, of the al Qaeda-linked bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004. There is also renewed interest in the victims of the dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Spain’s law on assistance to victims of terrorism is touted as a model in the international community, as is the country’s comprehensive violence against women act. The Spanish Parliament has passed a Victims Charter, following the legal framework set out by the European Union. Spain’s legal system is mixed accusatorial/inquisitorial and allows for third-party prosecution by crime victims as well as popular accusation. Spain has a fairly recent history of victim service offices, and Valencia was the seat of its very first office in 1985.
Castellón de la Plana (population 180,000) is the capital of the province of Castellón. Its history dates to 1251 and its architecture boasts Moorish, Gothic, Renaissance and modernist buildings. In a city of this size, students can easily integrate into Spanish daily life, benefiting from both a coastal Mediterranean atmosphere as well as a bustling nightlife. Easily accessible to other cities in Spain, Castellón is an hour from Valencia, three hours from Barcelona and two and a half hours from Madrid. The Universidad Jaume I (UJI) is a public university located in Castellón. Established in 1991, UJI is a modern university with about 15,000 students. It offers an undergraduate degree in Criminology and Security and a master’s degree in Criminal Justice.
One of the participating students, Ana Montoya, is a senior with a double major in Criminology and International Criminal Justice. The study-abroad program in Spain was her first time traveling alone, and while she admitted to being scared initially, in the end, she said, “it was the most amazing experience I could ever have, like a dream come true.”
“It was definitely a valuable learning experience,” said Montoya. “There was no single high point of the trip because I loved everything!”
The total-immersion approach to the course, with bilingual teaching and close interactions with the locals, was a major part of the overall positive experience, Montoya said. “Everyone was welcoming and happy to meet with us. The local police showed us around and provided gifts for us like maps for the area, bus cards and bike cards. The students at the university were friendly, and since we were able to communicate with them it was really easy for us to get to know each other.”
Evaluations received from participants have been uniformly positive, said Professor Barberet, adding that the study-abroad program is expected to run again in June 2016.