The educational protest in the Valencian Community and Catalonia intensifies. In Valencia, people dressed in green took center stage on the fifth day of the indefinite strike, in the largest mobilization of the week, with more than 35,000 attendees. In Catalonia, with almost daily strikes, the main action has taken place in Lleida, where teachers have blocked the N-240. In both territories they demand improvements in public education and salaries that are among the lowest in Spain.
The fifth day of strike in the Valencian Community has had a follow-up of 36%, according to the Generalitat (the data is from one in the afternoon and the previous four days the Ministry has increased this participation by about three points at 5:00 p.m.). And it has been accompanied by the largest educational demonstration in Valencia, with teachers from all over the autonomous community. EL PAÍS has taken to the streets of Valencia to collect complaints from teachers in the community: these four testimonies summarize their problems.
“It takes more than 15 days to cover substitutions”
One of them is Rosa Llorca, 27 years old, a Valencian teacher, who has come from La Vila Joiosa (Alicante): “I am here for many reasons. I am an interim and, when it comes to covering substitutions, it takes more than 15 days. We work, in some centers, in inhumane conditions. Not only because of the ratios, which we have up to 40 students in Baccalaureate and 35 in ESO, but because of the lack of resources, ventilation, in the first years we normally teach in prefabricated classrooms… And the situation is getting worse,” he says on Colón Street.
The reality in the classrooms has changed a lot compared to when she went to school, just 10 years ago, she says, but the resources that the centers have have not. “When I studied, we were basically the people of the town. Now we deal with many different realities. In class I have Chinese, Pakistani, Moroccan, Algerian kids… And if you add massification to that, you can’t reach everyone.”
“I am a counselor and I am alone for 350 children”
Claudia Cucala, 40, is a counselor at a public school in Vila-real, in Castellón. “I have 350 students and I am alone as a counselor.” Her partner Marta Sarrió, who walks with her in the demonstration, is one of the four counselors at the Ondara institute, with 1,400 students. The wide range of responsibilities entrusted to them, from acting in the event of conflicts to guiding the kids towards the different training paths based on their profile, is, with that volume, unviable, they regret, which forces them to focus on those who have the most problems. “You don’t even go to see the rest, because it’s impossible,” says Sarrió. “We have to address issues related to coexistence, activate many protocols, make curricular adaptations, assign children with educational needs, which are many, specialists in hearing and language, in therapeutic pedagogy, social educators, physiotherapists…,” says Cucala.
For the counselor, it is frustrating that, since at the beginning of the course the centers’ staff is almost never complete, these specialists are displaced to fill tutor positions and teach as just another teacher. “Sometimes the situation continues until November, so the students are not cared for.”
“We have lost a lot of purchasing power”
Andrés Bertí, 31 years old, is a secondary school teacher at a high school in L’Alcúdia, Valencia, and teaches the subjects of History and Philosophy. “We have dragged decades of disinvestment and contempt for the educational function and we are going to be in the streets no matter who governs to defend it and recover the prestige it has lost with so much privatization,” he says, with megaphone in hand. “The classrooms are overcrowded and we have a false inclusion. Many students with special needs have been incorporated, but without support professionals.” Educational regulations require them, on the other hand, to renew the way they are taught. “But they don’t let us. They prevent us with so much bureaucracy and overcrowding.” Regarding the salary claim, he points out: “If we take into account our salary and how life has become more expensive, we have lost a lot of purchasing power. We earn the equivalent of 500 euros less than in 2012. It is a shame that says a lot about the value given to education in this country.”
“We ask for dignity and that we not be belittled”
Aurelia Ponce, 51 years old, teacher of Geography and History at a high school in Puerto de Sagunto (Valencia), has classrooms with 30 students. “Of course you can teach, but you don’t reach the students. We have inclusion and diversity that is wonderful, but there is a lack of human resources to be able to dedicate time to them. I can’t do adequate follow-up with the 127 students I have. Or I don’t live, which is already happening to me, because the second year of Baccalaureate takes a lot of load.” For Ponce, teaching is a “very vocational” job, he says. “But we have been very exhausted since the pandemic. If we have come here it is because of the students. We ask for dignity and not to be belittled. We are tired of constantly justifying everything we do. Salary is important but it is not everything.”
