It does not subside, but quite the opposite. The center of Valencia has been taken over since mid-morning by thousands of teachers dressed in green t-shirts from all over the autonomous community who, under the leadership of the popular Juanfran Pérez Llorca, have gathered in the largest demonstration held during the week, surpassing, according to first impressions, that of Monday, which brought together 26,000 people according to the Government Delegation. until the beginning of June, generally organized by region, the main mobilization this Friday has been concentrated in Lleida, where a group of teachers has cut off traffic on the N-240 early in the morning by overturning containers, tables, chairs and other school furniture. to improve the conditions of public education and to improve teacher salaries that are among the lowest in Spain are quite similar to those heard in Valencia.
“The most important thing is that today the families and students have joined us. Because we are not doing this strike just for ourselves, but for the children,” says Amparo, a 48-year-old teacher, who has come to the Valencian capital from Picassent with several colleagues to join the protest. “We have classrooms with up to 26 students of different nationalities and very different educational needs. There are days when you come home and you feel sorry because you think that you have treated them like furniture, because you don’t have the hours to take care of them all well. I have been working for 25 years and I have never seen anything like it,” he says. “We are here,” adds Valentí, a teacher at the Juan Ripollés public school in Castellón, “to avoid the dismantling of public education and the transfer of funds to public and private education. And why not say it, to improve working conditions, spaces, human resources, so that people who get sick are replaced, which is not happening, so that on September 1 all the staff are already formed, which usually takes two weeks, and for the maintenance of power acquisitive; it is being said that we want a salary increase when we have had a decrease in the last 9 or 10 years.”
The forcefulness of the protests brought the Valencian and Catalan governments together with the unions this Thursday. The meetings ended without agreements, but they agreed to continue negotiating next week. The Illa Government sent a relatively optimistic message at the end of the meeting, pointing out that it saw room for an agreement. In Valencia, although there were no similar winks, those responsible for the Ministry of Education committed to working all weekend to present a new proposal on Monday.
The administrations did not include, neither in the Barcelona nor in the Valencia meeting, proposals for salary improvements. The unions of both territories raise a long list of demands, which cover the reduction of the ratios of students per class, a reinforcement of human resources to address diversity in classrooms, the improvement of infrastructure, especially air conditioning, and, in the case of the Valencian Community, a change in the educational law approved by the PP and Vox that has reduced the weight of the Valencian in the system. But in both autonomous communities, unions have warned that the salary issue must also be part of the agreement.
“We are one of the communities with the most students with disorders or vulnerable and this has an important impact in the classroom,” says Rosa Aguilà, spokesperson for the Ustec union in Lleida, the majority in the educational sector in Catalonia. “You can have 25 students and 7 or 8 with needs and the teacher is not an expert in language or special education. We need integrators, psychologists and specialized personnel to serve students with needs so that the ordinary ones can also be taken care of.”
Aguilà has also regretted that the Generalitat does not. “If there was an opportunity to stop the strike, it was lost yesterday because the counselor showed up with her hands in her pockets,” says the teacher, who considers the salary increase agreed upon until now, of about 60 euros per month, “indecent.”
