Valencian Community PAU History of Spain common mistakes
Valencian Community PAU History of Spain · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When commenting a historical text, the candidate paraphrases its content paragraph by paragraph and stops there, without stating the type of source (primary/secondary), its author, date, addressee, purpose or historical context, and without linking it to a specific process of the Valencian or Spanish syllabus.
The exam habit learned in earlier courses is to 'summarise the text', and under time pressure summarising feels productive; many candidates have never internalised that a PAU text commentary is graded on classification, contextualisation and analysis of ideas, not on paraphrase.
What to do instead
Before writing, fill a four-line grid on the draft sheet: nature and type of source, author and circumstances, date and addressee, historical context (named process plus dates). Then write the commentary with one paragraph per grid line, quoting two or three short phrases from the text to anchor each idea. Practise with a 10-minute timer on texts from the Cortes de Cádiz, the Valencian regionalist movement and the Franco-era laws until the grid is automatic.
The candidate dates and orders events wrongly, for example placing the Valencian Statute of Autonomy before the 1978 Constitution, treating the Compromise of Caspe (1412) as part of the Reconquest, or confusing the War of the Spanish Succession with the War of Independence, and then builds a whole answer on that wrong sequence.
Syllabus topics are studied as separate blocks and the chronological spine that connects them is never built; under exam pressure approximate dates get rounded to the nearest century, and dynastic names (Austria vs Bourbon) sound interchangeable.
What to do instead
Build and memorise one dated timeline from 711 to 1982 with only the 40 anchor events the syllabus names, and rehearse writing it from memory weekly. For each anchor, add one 'before/after' sentence (e.g. the Nueva Planta decrees of 1707 abolished Valencian fueros after the Bourbon victory at Almansa). When an answer starts, write the relevant decade range at the top of the page and check every date you write against it.
In questions on the Second Republic, Civil War or Francoism, the candidate writes a moral judgement or a generic narrative ('it was a dark period', 'there was much repression') instead of naming the specific reform, law, institution or phase: the 1931 Constitution, the agrarian reform, the Statute of Autonomy of the Valencian Country approved in 1982 (not 1936-37), the 1938 decrees, the Stabilisation Plan of 1959, the Development Plans, or the organic laws of the Transition.
These topics carry strong emotional charge and abundant film and family memory, so the candidate substitutes remembered impressions for the precise institutional vocabulary the exam rewards; revision notes often list events without their legal names.
What to do instead
For each period, make a two-column table: 'measure/institution' and 'date plus one-line effect'. Force yourself to use the official names (Ley de Reforma Agraria, Estatuto de Autonomía de la Comunitat Valenciana, Ley para la Reforma Política, Pactos de la Moncloa). In practice answers, underline every proper name of a law or body to check you have at least four per question.
The candidate treats the Crown of Aragon and the Kingdom of Valencia as a single undifferentiated block, so answers miss the specific institutions and their evolution: the Corts Valencianes, the Generalitat Valenciana, the Furs de València, the Justícia, the Germania revolt, the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 and its demographic and economic effect on the Valencian kingdom.
Regional history is often taught briefly at the end of the medieval and early modern units, and the shared 'Crown of Aragon' label encourages candidates to assume identical institutions across Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia and Mallorca.
What to do instead
Draw a diagram of the Crown of Aragon with each constituent kingdom in its own box, listing under Valencia only: Furs (1238/1261), Corts, Generalitat, Justícia, and the key crises (Germanies 1519-1523, expulsion of Moriscos 1609, Nueva Planta 1707). Practise a 15-line answer on 'the Kingdom of Valencia within the Crown of Aragon' that explicitly contrasts Valencia's institutions with those of Catalonia and Castile.
In graph, map, image or statistics questions, the candidate describes the surface ('the line rises', 'there are dark areas on the map') without identifying the variable, units, period, source and trend phases, and without explaining the historical causes of the change shown.
Candidates prepare narrative topics and treat the practical exercise as a reading-comprehension task; they have not practised the standard sequence of describing, analysing and interpreting a source under time limits.
What to do instead
Use a fixed protocol for every practical source: identify type, variable, units, period and source; describe the overall trend and split it into phases with dates; then explain each phase with a named historical cause (e.g. a population graph showing the 1609 fall, or emigration figures in the 1960s). Do at least five timed exercises covering one graph, one map, one image and two statistical tables.
The candidate answers with a wall of undifferentiated prose, or the opposite: writes only a bare list of bullet points, without an introduction that defines the terms of the question, a body organised in labelled thematic blocks, and a conclusion that states the historical significance.
Time pressure pushes candidates to start writing immediately, and revision notes made of bullet lists are reproduced as bullet lists; nobody has drilled the structure as a separate skill from the content.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed skeleton: two-line definition of terms and time frame, three to five body blocks each with a title sentence, and a three-line conclusion on consequences and legacy. Spend the first three minutes writing only the block titles on the answer sheet, then fill them. Practise converting one of your bullet-list summaries into this skeleton so the content transfer becomes routine.
When asked to define or use historical vocabulary, the candidate gives circular definitions or confuses near-synonyms: 'fueros are the laws', 'desamortización is taking land', 'caciquismo is corruption', 'autarquía' vs 'desarrollismo', 'Glorious Revolution' (1868) vs 'Glorious Revolution' (1688 England), 'Germanies' vs 'Comuneros'.
Vocabulary is memorised as one-word glosses rather than as concepts with agents, dates and consequences, and Spanish and English historiographical terms overlap confusingly.
What to do instead
Keep a glossary card per term with four fields: one-sentence definition, who promoted it, date range, and one consequence. Build 60 cards covering the syllabus terms (furs, germanies, moriscos, señorío, desamortización, caciquismo, turno, autarquía, desarrollismo, estatuto, autonomía). Test yourself by writing the four fields from memory, not by rereading.
The candidate confuses the political systems of the Restoration and the early 20th century: the turno pacífico with the Sexenio Democrático, the Conservative/Liberal alternation with the two-party system of the Second Republic, and Primo de Rivera's dictatorship (1923-1930) with the Restoration parliamentary monarchy, or places the Moroccan colonial wars in the wrong decade.
The period 1874-1931 contains several regimes with similar-sounding party names and overlapping leaders, and candidates learn them as a list of governments rather than as a system with a mechanism (electoral fraud, caciquismo, king as arbiter).
What to do instead
Draw a regime chart for 1874-1931 with each regime, its constitution or legal basis, its parties and its end date, and mark where the Moroccan campaigns (1909 Melilla, 1921 Annual) and the labour movement fit. Write a one-page explanation of how the turno worked mechanically, from the encasillado to the cacique, so the system rather than the names is remembered.
In questions on the Transition, the Constitution of 1978, the State of Autonomies and the Valencian Statute, the candidate gives a generic account of 'democracy arrived' without the specific legal sequence: the 1976 Law for Political Reform, the 1977 general elections, the Moncloa Pacts, the 1978 Constitution's articles on autonomy, the 1979 statutes of the historic nationalities, the 1982 Valencian Statute, and EU accession in 1986.
This is the most recent block and often the least revised because it is assumed to be 'current affairs'; the legal instruments are abstract and easily merged into one vague process.
What to do instead
Make a dated sequence table 1975-1986 with the legal instrument, the date and one consequence per row, and add a separate column for the Valencian case (pre-autonomy, 1982 Statute, later reforms). For the Constitution, memorise the articles the syllabus names (1, 2, 14, 137-139 on autonomy) and be able to explain the difference between the 'fast track' and 'slow track' of access to autonomy.
The candidate writes long preambles on the Palaeolithic or on Roman Hispania in a question centred on a later period, or answers a question on one domain by narrating an adjacent one (e.g. explaining the Catholic Monarchs when asked about the Habsburg empire), so the answer drifts away from the question and loses marks for relevance.
Candidates revise by narrating everything they know about a keyword, and the exam question's specific wording (a period, a process, a comparison) is skimmed rather than parsed; anxiety makes the first familiar topic take over the page.
What to do instead
Before writing, rewrite the question in your own words in one line and list the three things it demands; strike out any paragraph that does not serve one of those three. Practise 'question parsing' on ten past prompts, identifying the verb (explain, compare, analyse, comment) and the limits (period, place, process), and time-box answers so that no preamble exceeds three lines.