How much scandal there must be over the decision to put plainclothes police officers in schools for Junts per Catalunya and the Comuns to coincide in criticism! Hearing the same argument from Mónica Sales (JxC) and Jessica Albiach (EnComú) in the Parliament sounded as unusual as an alliance between Barça and Espanyol or, even worse, between Sant Andreu and Europa. And all that, moreover, just a few hours after Carles Puigdemont’s group blocked the extension of rent controls in the Congress of Deputies (Gerardo Pissarello, a Comuns deputy in Madrid, accused JxC yesterday of “not having even a minimum of humanism”).
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The Govern’s initiative to pacify some schools with mossos has also unsettled Esquerra and the CUP, and the spokesperson for the anti-capitalists, Pilar Castillejo, has accused Salvador Illa of “buying into the mental framework of the far right.” The president has insisted that “half of the OECD countries have agents of this type to help mediate in schools,” but the truth is that, for the general public, the incursion of police inside an educational facility can seem unusual.
Just as, at one time, people entered churches to “take sanctuary” and avoid falling into the hands of armed forces, a school can be sacred for a secular society like ours. Besides, resorting to permanent plainclothes mossos d’Esquadra can be interpreted as an admission of failure by a group, that of Education, which needs oversight. It could be said that, instead of having a school that educates to produce future adults who need less police surveillance, the opposite is taught: “kids, know that you will always have a cop nearby, just in case.”
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The opposition admitted this Wednesday the existence of conflicts in schools, although Albiach argued it like this: “they are directly related to the fact that one in three children in Catalonia is in poverty.” And they stated that the solution to these situations must come from within the educational world. That was how emphatic Ester Capella (ERC) sounded before the councilor Ester Niubó: “Do you think social educators are useless? Do you think psychopedagogues are useless? Are you aware of the message you send to society and families?” Niubó has defined the measure as “preventive,” and Salvador Illa has tried to minimize it by assuring that it is a “proof of concept” at the request of some centers.
Will those words be the prelude to a possible reversal? Who knows. The truth is that the idea has raised hackles in a sector as sensitive as it has been tense in recent times, just as teachers announce 17 days of strike before the end of the school year and further question the recent Govern agreement with only two unions.
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