The relevance of the study: attempts to secede of Catalonia from Spain in 2012–2017 are a characteristic manifestation of the crisis of the national states in the context of globalization. The objective of the study is to determine the politicalinstitutional and ethno-political parameters of the Catalan crisis of 2012–2017 in the context of the interactions of the Spanish state of autonomies and their autonomous communities. The research materials are normative juridical acts of the Kingdom of Spain and the Autonomous Community of Catalonia, resolutions of political parties, statements of political leaders, results of opinion polls, statistical data of population censuses. Research methods: neoinstitutionalism, constructivist paradigm in ethnopolitology. The results of the investigation. The Catalan crisis of 2012–2017 confirmed the decrease in confidence in the state of autonomy and the party system of the country, caused by a deficit of democracy. The main factors in the fragmentation of the state are: the unfinished nation-building; weak national identity compared to regional and ethnic identity; import of secession institutes and technologies. The conflict is not resolved and requires a radical reform of Spain’s political system based on dialogue and constitutional reform.

On 2016, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda officially came into force. With its 17 Goals countries will mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change on global, regional and national levels. Education is explicitly recognized in the SDGs as the Goal number 4. To achieve “inclusive and equitable quality education” countries started to develop national programs aiming to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda according to their specific needs and challenges. Brazil declared to adopt main SDGs in the country´s dimension, including the target “to ensure equal access of all people to quality education”.

The article sets out to analyze the changing political reality in Spain perturbed by such emerged parties as Podemos and Ciudadanos. While the first one appeared riding on the wave of the massive protests of the «indignant» caused by consequences of the economic crisis and was organized around the populist strategy, the second one was created initially to defend the rights of the Spanish people in Cataluña and gaining popularity grew from the regional party into the national one. The fact that these two young parties could win so fast the credibility of the citizens shows the weakness of the existing Spanish bipolar political system. The authors pretend to compare the programs of both parties and try to predict their possible influence on the political, social and economic situation in Spain.

The current situation in Spain is characterized by the confrontation of two movements known as «independence movement» and «separatism». Both the Basque region and Catalonia have their own language, culture and a long history of the development of isolation tendencies. However, the objectives and the ways to achieve them have been different for a long time. In order to preserve the sociocultural unity of Spain it is necessary to eliminate the factors that that prevent people from finding the solution to the conflict, and the most important thing is to initiate dialogue, reach a compromise and be ready to stand by the words. It is difficult to imagine that any part will be separated from Spain from the economic point of view and, above all, socio-cultural, because the majority of Spanish population considers Spain as a strong and united State.

A lot has been written about Agustín de Betancourt, his life in Russia, his contribution to the architecture, construction and organization of the transport system in the Russian Empire, as well as his life, his training and his professional career in Spain. However, little is known about when, how and why he makes the decision to leave his country permanently and settle in Russia. According to the documentation found in both Russian and Spanish archives, it has been shown that it is the Russian ambassador to Spain, Ivan Muravyov-Apostol, who, shortly after his arrival in Spain, at the end of 1803, after personally meeting Betancourt, proposes its contract to Saint Petersburg. Once the approval is obtained, the proposal is transferred. Also, the discrepancies between Manuel Godoy and Betancourt are studied in detail for the work of channeling the Genil river and the intervention in Soto de Roma, Royal Site owned by the minister, which marked the deterioration of the relations between both and took the engineer to consider, negotiate and accept the offer to settle in Russia. Both facts are studied within the framework of his professional career in Spain.

The article purports to summarize and rethink a considerable amount of facts collected by various researchers who studied the linguistic situation and the interplay of two languages, Spanish and Guarani, in modern Paraguay. Having revised a number facts pertaining to different levels of the language system, the author arrives at the conclusion that the linguistic phenomenon called yopará is emerging as a new language in the full sense of this word, its mixed origin notwithstanding, a real future national language now taking shape.

In languages with a long and rich history, like Spanish, we get in touch with the words and expressions that are in the mouth from the earliest times, as well as with those that have just emerged and integrated the vocabulary. However, it is necessary to realize that knowing the history of the words that contain a deep cognitive experience, accumulated by generations of people who share the linguistic habits and the same history, and understanding its original meaning and its use, allows to preserve the language and the culture.

This article is dedicated to investigation of the verbs used in the syntactic constructions describing the influence that a person has on emotions he experiences. These constructions show that the subject of emotion tends to experience some emotion that is usually positive o he is already experiencing it but tries to control this emotion o feeling and influences over it in order to continue to experience it in  future in case of positive emotions or, on the contrary, stop experiencing it in case of negative emotions. The main components of these structures are a predicate name of emotions, which designates positive and negative emotions and a verb the semantic meaning of which conveys the way the subject of emotion influences this emotion o feeling in order to begin to experience it or to extend its existence, or that it has ceased to exist in this subject. The aim of this study is to analyze the semantic features of verbs, which are used with the predicate names of emotions in the above semantic constructions and to reveal the character of expression of emotions and emotional life of a person.

Spanish has a large number of verbs used in syntactic constructions to express the idea of control that a person exercises over his emotions and feelings. The analyzed constructions show that the subject of emotions plays an active role, and emotions are passive because they depend on the will of the subject. The analyzed constructions demonstrate the richness of linguistic means, in general, and of verbs used metaphorically, in particular, which a person uses to describe the possibilities of controlling his emotional state and the processes of his emotional and spiritual life.

The project «The Economic Value of Spanish» proves the importance of Spanish language for the economy of Spain. The most important aspect of its functions is the role that the language plays in the internationalization of Spanish companies; it also multiplies by four commercial exchanges between Spanish-speaking countries. According to the study, Spanish language gives 16% of the economic value of GDP and generates employment for 3.5 million of Spanish citizens. Although Spanish has a lot of prestige in the economic and cultural field, it also lacks certain weaknesses in terms of its importance in the field of Science and Technology.

The article deals with the grammar category of modality in the structure of modern Spanish. The author aims to analyze the structural organization of the grammar category of modality in the Spanish language and to reveal its cognitive bases in order to form a schematic representation of this category, which in the future will allow, first of all, to solve the problem of the number of moods in modern Spanish, and also to avoid some mistakes when translating sentences from Russian into Spanish, and from Spanish into Russian as well. The usage of a functionalsemantic approach helps to analyze in details the structure of the grammar category of modality in the language and to educe its conceptual bases. Within a framework of the study the author introduces the term “field of time”. The “field of time” refers to the mentality, while the grammar category of time - to a language. The correlation of these terms facilitates to visualize the connection of the way of thinking with a language and to separate three different moods in the Spanish language, that are el Indicativo, el Subjuntivo, el Imperativo.

The article reviews the history of discourse analysis development. The definitions of the terms discourse, political discourse and metaphor are given. The main contemporary European and Russian linguistic approaches to metaphor study are analyzed. The article also presents the analysis of the conceptual metaphor types (orientational, ontological, structural) in the political discourse, as well as its functions according to the cognitive approach. The metaphor nominating different socio-political actions and phenomena on the basis of the cognitive world picture is an integral part of the modern political discourse and contains vast imaginative and notional potential, the skillful usage of which helps the orator to carry out their speech intentions. The speech given by the Argentinean President (2007–2015) K. Fernández de Kirchner during the 69th session of the UN General Assembly has become the material for the study.

The article deals with the intertextual theory in the mass media. It provides an hyperlink definition, analyses hyperlinked intertexts in the Portuguese media written news internet discourse, gives its basic pragmatic functions.

The research focuses on semantic and functional peculiarities of lexemes libertad, igualdad, justicia, lucha, poder serving to verbalize key concepts of Latin American political discourse and, in particular, the influential Mexican diary El Informador. The investigation is based on the semasiological approach realized in the componential analysis and the semantic-cognitive approach carried out in the conceptual analysis method. The main objectives of the research are: 1)to investigate the semantic structure of the selected units, identify their semes that are regularly implemented in the political discourse; 2)to look for distinctive concepts verbalized by these lexemes; 3) to reveal correspondences between the semes and the concepts studied. The results of the investigation allow us to specify the semantic of the lexemes in the political discourse and justify the use of two fundamentally different approaches for the analysis of the lexical units.