With regards to the latest European Recommendations, developing key competences has become an important goal of education. The purpose of this comparative study is to focus on this topic considering the teaching of Latin and Greek in upper secondary school in Italy and Spain. A multiple case study with a mixed research design was used, with 173 students and 25 teachers as participants in the quantitative part and 40 students and 18 teachers in the qualitative part. The underlined results are a) the importance of working on the learning concepts of the students of Classics, as this influences the way they study b) the teaching factors that help pupils to develop key competences are evaluation, feedback, teacher personality, interactivity and discipline. Useful paths for daily teaching and new perspectives for future research in this field are offered.
