PAU History (Catalonia) common mistakes
PAU History (Catalonia) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the exam essay as a narrative summary of events ("then this happened, then that happened") rather than answering the specific question asked, e.g. asking about the causes of the crisis of 1917 and receiving a chronology of the Restoration period.
Under time pressure candidates fall back on memorised narratives and reproduce the textbook sequence instead of identifying the analytical demand of the prompt (causes, consequences, comparison, change and continuity).
What to do instead
Before writing, underline the key verb and the limits of the question (period, place, factor). Spend two minutes drafting a three-part outline (thesis, two or three argued blocks with evidence, conclusion) and check every paragraph against the prompt: if a paragraph does not answer the question, cut it.
Treating the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era as a single undifferentiated block, so answers about the radicalisation of 1792–94 or the reforms of the Consulate and Empire are answered with generic phrases about 'liberty, equality, fraternity'.
Revision is often organised by big labels rather than by phases, and the phases (1789, 1792, Terror, Thermidor, Directory, Consulate, Empire) each have distinct institutional and social content that is easy to blur.
What to do instead
Build a phase table with columns for dates, ruling body, key measures, social base and opposition. Practise writing short answers that place a specific measure (Civil Constitution of the Clergy, Le Chapelier law, Napoleonic Code, Continental System) in its correct phase and explain its significance.
Explaining the Industrial Revolution as a single cause (usually 'the steam engine' or 'coal') instead of a set of interlocking factors, and ignoring the debate on why Britain first and why Catalonia industrialised differently.
Textbook summaries and popular accounts foreground inventions; candidates then mistake a symbol of industrialisation for its explanation, and struggle to compare cases.
What to do instead
Prepare a factor checklist (agricultural change and rural surplus, demographic growth, capital and credit, transport, colonial markets, coal and iron, institutional protection of property, scientific culture) and apply it comparatively to Britain, Belgium and Catalonia, noting which factors were present, absent or substituted. Catalan industrialisation is usually explained through protectionism, cotton, water power and later coal imports, and the absence of a strong state industrial policy.
Narrating the Spanish liberal revolution as a smooth linear progress, without distinguishing the Cadiz Constitution of 1812, the Liberal Triennium (1820–23), the Ominous Decade, the regencies of Maria Cristina and Espartero, and the moderate and progressive phases of the reign of Isabella II.
The chronology is dense and the same actors and labels (pronunciamiento, Constitution of 1837 and 1845, desamortización) recur, so candidates collapse the period into 'liberalism arrived'.
What to do instead
Make a timeline with four columns: date, event, constitutional text or legal measure, and social group supported or excluded (for example, the exclusion of the peasantry from political rights under census suffrage). Learn two or three specific laws per phase and use them as evidence rather than vague references to 'liberal reforms'.
Describing the sexenio democrático (1868–74) as simply a failure of democracy without explaining the federalist cantonalist revolts, the Cuban war, the Carlist war, the division between unitarian and federal republicans, and the role of the army.
The period is usually taught briefly as a prelude to the Restoration, so candidates learn the outcome (the Bourbon restoration) without the mechanisms of the crisis.
What to do instead
Write a one-page cause-and-effect map: 1868 revolution → 1869 Constitution with universal male suffrage → search for a monarch → Amadeo I → First Republic → cantonalism, Carlism and Cuba → Pavía's coup and Serrano → Pronunciamiento of Sagunto. For each link, state one concrete actor or measure.
Treating imperialism and the First World War as separate topics, so answers on the origins of the war list the Sarajevo assassination and alliances without connecting them to imperial rivalry, the Moroccan crises, the Balkan question and the arms race.
Syllabuses often divide the topics into different units, and candidates revise them in isolation, missing the causal chain the exam expects.
What to do instead
Prepare a causal ladder with long-term (imperial competition, nationalism, alliance blocs, militarism), medium-term (Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911, Balkan wars of 1912–13, Austro-German rivalry) and short-term (Sarajevo, ultimatum, mobilisation) levels. Practise writing an answer that explicitly links at least two levels.
Conflating the Russian Revolution of February 1917 with October 1917 and mixing up the roles of the Provisional Government, the Petrograd Soviet, the Constituent Assembly and the Bolsheviks, or describing the USSR as if it existed from 1917.
The two revolutions are often taught as one event, and the institutional names are unfamiliar, so candidates use them interchangeably.
What to do instead
Draw a dated diagram: February 1917 (bread riots, mutiny, abdication of Nicholas II) → dual power (Provisional Government and Soviet) → April Theses → July Days → Kornilov affair → October seizure of power → Constituent Assembly dissolved January 1918 → Civil War and war communism → NEP 1921 → USSR formally created 1922 → Stalin's rise. Attach one document or slogan to each stage.
Explaining fascism and Nazism only through a list of dictatorial traits (one party, terror, propaganda) without distinguishing fascist Italy from Nazi Germany or from authoritarian conservative regimes such as the Salazar or Franco regimes, and without explaining how they came to power.
Comparative categories are taught with broad checklists, and candidates then apply the same list to every regime, losing the analytical distinctions the exam rewards.
What to do instead
Build a comparison grid: social base, relationship with the monarchy and the army, role of the party militia, racial policy, economic programme, and route to power (electoral and legal appointment in Italy and Germany versus civil war victory in Spain). Use at least one concrete law or event per cell, such as the Lateran Pacts, the Enabling Act of 1933, or the Nuremberg Laws.
Writing the Cold War as a simple chronology of crises (Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan) without explaining the phases of coexistence, the role of nuclear deterrence, decolonisation and the North-South dimension, or the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989–91.
Crisis lists are easy to memorise and feel sufficient, but exam questions usually ask about causes, phases or consequences, and the end of the Cold War requires explaining structural and agency factors.
What to do instead
Structure the topic in phases (1945–49 origins, 1950s–60s confrontation and decolonisation, détente in the 1970s, second Cold War in 1980–85, 1985–91 transformation) and for each phase note one institutional framework (Marshall Plan, NATO and Warsaw Pact, Helsinki Accords) and one crisis. For 1989–91, separate economic stagnation, imperial overstretch, the nationalities question, Gorbachev's reforms and the role of Eastern European societies.
Answering questions on contemporary Catalonia with generic Spanish history, or with slogans about identity, instead of concrete institutional and social content such as the Mancomunitat, the Bases de Manresa, the electoral bases of the Lliga Regionalista, the Statute of 1932, the collectivisations of 1936–37, or the recovery of the Generalitat in 1977 and the Statute of 1979.
Candidates revise Catalonia as a subplot of Spanish history and lack the specific dates, institutions and actors, so they generalise about 'Catalanism' without distinguishing conservatism, republicanism and federalism.
What to do instead
Build a Catalonia-specific timeline with three tracks: economic (textile industrialisation, protectionism, the 1929 and 1970s crises), political movement (Bases de Manresa 1892, Lliga, Solidaritat Catalana, Acció Catalana, ERC 1931, Estatut 1932, Generalitat restored 1931 and 1977) and repression (Francoist laws, execution of Companys 1940, the 1951 tram boycott, the 1962 Fets del Palau, the 1966 Caputxinada). Attach one institution or name to each date and practise linking the tracks in a single argument.