Festival and custom vocabulary
Learn the high-frequency set (full glossary in the note): la fiesta (festival), la costumbre / la tradición (custom), el desfile (parade), los fuegos artificiales (fireworks), el disfraz (costume), plus festival names la Semana Santa, las Navidades, la Nochevieja, el Día de los Muertos. Distinction: costumbres = everyday practices (greetings, mealtimes); fiestas = specific dated celebrations, often religious.
ser for identity, hay for what there is
Two structures do most of the descriptive work:
To compare with a festival in your own country, use más/menos ... que, tan ... como (es tan importante como...), and mientras que / en cambio to contrast two customs directly.
Drawn from real examiner reports.
Agree the adjective with its own noun
Adjective agreement is a top Writing accuracy error, and cultural descriptions pile up nouns (festival, costumes, food):
Check the gender AND number of the noun each adjective attaches to.
(s23 P41; w23 P41)
Use hay, not tiene or es/son
To say what takes place at a festival, use impersonal hay ("there is/are") — not tiene (needs a possessor) or es/son (identity, not existence):
hay never changes for number.
(digest Q3 improvement list, all sittings)
Malforming me gusta / me gustan
Opinions use gustar/encantar, among the most malformed verbs in Writing:
Match the ending to what is liked (sg. → gusta, pl. → gustan), the pronoun to who likes it.
(digest gustar/encantar list, every sitting)
ser vs estar describing a festival
ser describes a festival's fixed identity; estar its current state or mood — a distinction the reports flag every sitting:
Do not write es lleno for a temporary state, nor está religiosa for a permanent quality.
(s23 P22 Q6h)
Capitalise festival names, not fiesta
A festival's proper name takes a capital, but the ordinary words around it stay lower-case:
Do not lower-case semana santa, nor capitalise everyday nouns like Fiesta as English does.
(general FL trap)
The personal a with people
When a verb's direct object is a specific person, Spanish inserts the personal a, often needed in festival descriptions:
Its omission is on the Writing common-errors list every sitting: use a before a person, not a thing.
(general FL trap)
Not every country shares one festival
"Spanish culture" is not one uniform set of festivals:
Name where a festival is celebrated (in Spain, in Mexico), not just "Spanish".
Plan: describe, then compare
Describe: name the festival and when it is, use hay for what takes place and ser for identity (es una fiesta religiosa). Compare: contrast it with a home custom using mientras que / a diferencia de and comparatives (más/menos/tan ... que).
Add an opinion with a reason
Opinion plus justification is explicitly rewarded under Task completion and Range. Add Me parece fascinante porque... or Pienso que es mejor que... ya que... — never a bare me gusta with no reason, and make the opinion verb agree with what is liked.
Vary tenses for the Range mark
Describe the festival in the present, then widen the tense range the Q3 mark scheme rewards by adding what you DID at a similar celebration: el año pasado fui a..., cuando era pequeño/a celebrábamos... — the preterite for events, the imperfect for background.
This topic covers customs (costumbres), traditions (tradiciones) and festivals (fiestas) across the Spanish-speaking world, and the language needed to describe one and compare it with a custom from your own country — a recurring Speaking topic-conversation and Writing Q3 task type.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| la fiesta, la festividad | the festival, celebration |
| la costumbre, la tradición | the custom, the tradition |
| celebrar, festejar | to celebrate |
Full notes, flashcards, Q&A and the topic quiz for every premium subject.
Premium plans are US$8.99/month or US$49.99/year — first month free.
Studying with a parent's blessing? Show them this.
