Capítulo 1:

• History and development of any of the 6 fiestas on pp. 24-25 or las Fallas de Valencia (p. 30).
• Carnaval in Tenerife compared to Carnaval in other places.  (A few cities that are particularly well-known for Carnaval are Ponce, Puerto Rico; Veracruz, México; and New Orleans, USA)

• Salvador Dalí and his work-- You might want to concentrate on one particular aspect/period/medium
• Dalí and cinema
• Dalí and the press/Dalí as celebrity

• Flamenco in the US vs. in Spain
• More about any of the flamenco artists mentioned in the article
• More about flamenco itself-- sub-genres, trends in lyrics, etc.

• Picasso (p. 31)  The book mentions his Blue Period; what other periods did he have? (If you think you don't like Picasso, you'll have a whole new respect for him if you see some of the things he painted when he was still a kid.)
• Picasso and Guernica-- it's one of his most famous works; what's it really about?  Why is it in black and white?
• Picasso and Dalí-- They worked in many of the same places at more or less the same time.  What did they think of each other?

• Fernando Diaz Plaja (author of the reading we're not going to do, p. 33-34).  Who was he, and what else did he write?

Capítulo 2:

• More about any of the "lugares fascinantes" in this chapter.

• The political status of Puerto Rico vis-a-vis the U.S.  You would probably want to narrow this topic, possibly to:
• The history of US-Puerto Rico relations
• The current status of Puerto Rico-- what does "Estado Libre Asociado" mean, for example?  What rights do Puerto Ricans have or not have compared to other US citizens?
• The "statehood" debate-- what are the three major proposals for the future status of Puerto Rico, and what are the benefits and drawbacks of each?
(These might be better as library topics rather than Internet topics.)
• Tourism in Cuba.  (This would be a better Internet than library topic.)  If you do this topic, be sure to include information about who can and can't go to Cuba, and why.

• You might have trouble finding information on Nick Quijano, the artist featured in this chapter.  If so, and you really want to read about art, consider one of the following:
• Wilfredo Lam (an important and interesting Cuban artist of the 20th century, a contemporary of Picasso and Dalí.)
• A survey of contemporary Caribbean art.  Be sure you talk about the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.  Haiti and the former English colonies are interesting, but not germane to a Spanish course.
• La República Dominicana.  Usually I wouldn't recommend such a vague topic, but of all the Latin American nations, the Dominican Republic is one of the least-known by most North Americans.

• The history and influence of Caribbean music in the US.  Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Dominican music has been very important in the US since the 1920's.

Capítulo 3:

• More about any of the "lugares fascinantes" on p. 74-75.  These should all be relatively easy to find information about.

• José Guadalupe Posada

• Either of the "parejas famosas" on p. 73.  (Be sure you're clear about what countries they're from, though.  The other cultural information is about Mexico; these parejas are really included as vocabulary and reading practice rather than part of this chapter's cultural focus.)

• The phenomenon of the "piropo" (p. 72).  You  might be able to find some "debate" articles; some people consider the piropo a sort of cultural art form while others consider it offensive and archaic.

• Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.  One of the reasons we're  not doing the reading from this chapter is that it's presented in a very confusing way.  The Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera were married to each other, divorced, and re-married.  Diego also had a long relationship with Angelina Beloff, a Russian exile he met in France, and the reading comes from a novel composed of fictional letters from Angelina (Quiela) to Diego.  In order to really understand the reading, you have to know a fair amount about Diego Rivera's life and also about the artistic exile community in France in the '30s and '40s.  It's frankly too much work for a reading about one of the less important periods of Rivera's life.  Some more pertinent topics would be:
• Frida Kahlo (her work and/or her life story)
• Diego Rivero (his work and/or his life story)
• The story of Diego and Frida's life together
(Trying to study the work of both artists in one report would be too much; their work is too different and both did too much to be crammed into one little paper.)

If you're very ambitious, you could try to find out more about Diego and Quiela, or about the author Elena Poniatowska