The educational protest in the Valencian Community and Catalonia is intensifying. In Valencia, thousands of teachers dressed in green have taken to the center on the fifth day of an indefinite strike, in the largest mobilization of the week, with more than 35,000 attendees. In Catalonia, with almost daily stoppages, 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 among the lowest in Spain.
The fifth day of strike in the Valencian Community had a 36% participation rate, according to the Generalitat (the data is from 1 p.m. and in the previous four days the department had increased this participation by about three points by 5 p.m.). It was accompanied by the largest educational demonstration remembered in Valencia, with teachers coming from all over the autonomous community. EL PAÍS went out to the streets of Valencia to gather the complaints of the community’s teachers: these four testimonies summarize their problems.
“It takes more than 15 days to cover substitutions”
One of them is Rosa Llorca, 27 years old, Valencian language teacher, who has come from La Vila Joiosa (Alicante): “I am here for many reasons. I am a substitute teacher and, when it comes to covering substitutions, it takes more than 15 days. We work, in some centers, under inhumane conditions. Not only because of the ratios, where we have up to 40 students in Baccalaureate and 35 in ESO, but also due to the lack of resources, ventilation, in the first years we usually teach in prefabricated classrooms… And the situation is getting worse,” she says on Colón street.
The reality in classrooms has changed a lot compared to when she went to high school, just 10 years ago, she says, but the resources available to the centers have not. “When I studied, we were basically the kids from the town. Now we attend to many different realities. In class, I have Chinese, Pakistani, Moroccan, Algerian kids… And if you add overcrowding to that, you can’t reach everyone.”
“I am a counselor and I am alone for 350 children”
Claudia Cucala, 40 years old, is a counselor at a public school in Vila-real, Castellón. “I have 350 students and I am alone as a counselor.” Her colleague Marta Sarrió, who walks with her in the demonstration, is one of the four counselors at the Ondara high school, with 1,400 students. The wide range of responsibilities they have, from acting in case of conflicts to guiding the kids towards different educational paths based on their profile, is, with that volume, unfeasible, they lament, which forces them to focus on those with more 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, who are many, specialists in hearing and language, therapeutic pedagogy, social educators, physiotherapists…,” says Cucala.
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For the counselor, it is frustrating that, since at the beginning of the school year the staff in the centers are almost never complete, these specialists are displaced to cover tutor positions and teach as just another teacher. “Sometimes the situation lasts until November, so the students are not properly attended to.”
“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, teaching History and Philosophy. “We carry decades of disinvestment and disregard for the educational function and we will be on the streets no matter who governs to defend it and to recover the prestige it has lost with so much privatization,” he says, holding a megaphone. “Classrooms are overcrowded and we have false inclusion. Many students with special needs have been incorporated, but without support professionals.” The educational regulations also require them to renew the way they teach. “But they don’t let us. They prevent it with so much bureaucracy and overcrowding.” Regarding the salary claim, he points out: “If we consider our salary and how much 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 not to be belittled”
Aurelia Ponce, 51 years old, Geography and History teacher 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 an inclusion and diversity that is wonderful, but there are not enough human resources to dedicate time to them. I can’t properly 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 carries a heavy load.” Teaching is for Ponce a “very vocational” profession, she says. “But since the pandemic, we have been very exhausted. If we have come this far, 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.”
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