The TV Show 'Game of Thrones' as an Educational Axis to Teach Medieval Hispanic Cultures

This article shows how I have been lately combining my research in the cultural history of the Spanish Middle Ages and Early Renaissance with the TV show Game of Thrones for teaching purposes. I have been able to design a capstone seminar to attract students interested in the popular medievalising TV fiction, proving them than most of the elements of its success are not original, but they can also be found in most of medieval European cultures, including the Iberian Peninsula. In this paper I examine three main examples (Remesal interview between Philip the Handsome and Ferdinand the Catholic as narrated in Bernáldez’s Memorias; the legend of the Siete Infantes de Lara; and the Coplas del tabefe), providing both a methodology and course structure for other colleagues that perhaps might be interested in using Game of Thrones, or any other TV show, in order to take advantage in Higher Education of the medieval connection existing in some aspects of contemporary pop culture