Mobility in Spain took place in the week of preparation for Fallas festival in Valencia, enrolled in UNESCO?s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016. It is about huge wooden construction puppets that are placed in the streets and burnt at the end of the festival. Puppies represent criticism of a particular social political situation or people who are involved, and with their burning begins symbolically a new spring cycle cleansed of old debts and troubles. Upon arrival at the host school, an evaluation of the progress and implementation of the project activities was carried out with the goal of eventual correction of the activity programme. Before arrival hosts organized the activity of making Fallas in such a way that each state has its own two dolls (called ninot in Valencian language), which are dressed in Finnish, Greek, Portuguese and Croatian traditional costumes. Before coming to mobility in the field of civic education classes, all students agreed with the teachers on a common topic to be written on fallas by means of a debate method and have been acknowledged with the sociopolitical sluggishness of their country, and when they arrived to Spain they have learned about other countries as well. First day Treasure Hunt through the school was organized. By entering the various classrooms and answering to questions students learned about music, dance, culture and food related to Spain. Next day they visited – a natural reserve that has been used for the centuries to grow rice used in the preparation of traditional Paella dishes. During the preparation of Fallas festival, in collaboration with Falleros club, host school organized workshops on traditional Fallas music (pasodobles), dances (moma) and traditional Valencian instruments (dol?aina and tabal), dishes, ornaments, costumes and presentation of traditional outdoor games (valencian pilota, jumping rope etc.) was made. During the Meet and Eat Festival organized in school backyard a paella cooking contest was organized and Croatian team has cooked the best paella. During the festival, all the participants had possibility to choose the most beautifully made national ninot with the best inscription and the fragments will be kept permanently in the Croatian school as a sign of joint activities during the project. During the visit of Valencia students saw all the historical venues and photographed fallas directly on the streets. Some of this photos will in future be exibited in all the partners school. One day students played ActionBound game to get to know Sagunto?s intangible cultural heritage. At the end of mobiliy all participants played Kahoot based on Spanish cultural box that they received in their own schools several weeks before mobility. Finnish team made the quizz and will do the same in other mobilities. During the whole week all participants trained how to dance a special dance called Eurodance made with elements of all national dances.
By participating in the festival’s preparation and celebration, all participants of mobility have improved their cultural, civic and language competencies. As they wrote on the evaluatin sheets students participating in mobility returned home very satisfied and with higher self esteem. When they returned home they showed short film about their week in Sagunto to other pupils in their classes and some of them cooked paella in home ec classes. In each school organized a debate about civic rights as part of language classes with the goal to contribute to resolving conflicts in a democratic and socially acceptable way. Since the Spanish school has a special classroom for students with special needs some of these students were integrated into activities and one of them is going to take part in the mobility in Croatia in May 2019. In that way all the participants of the mobility have overthrown prejudices against different learners and learners with learning disabilities. Eurodance was such a succes that teachers and students involved in the project decided to make it a part of every future mobility. ActionBound game also resulted to be a good and interesting method of learning about intangible heritage and it will be implemented in geography, history and language classes with different topics.
