The only school in the Commonwealth that is still standing

The MasonicIn Catalonia there are 3,933 schools, but only one can boast of having been inaugurated by the writer and philosopher Eugeni d'Ors. Not only that, it can also claim to be the only one still operating of the four schools created by the Mancomunidad (Commonwealth) as a model for the educational reform it sought to promote. This is the Til·lers, a small rural school that has been running since 1919 and is located right at the beginning (or end) of the village of La Masó, in the Alt Camp region. "We were happy and content there," recalls Anton Banús, a 53-year-old man who seems to long for that childhood. "The village has changed a lot because agriculture is declining," he laments. La Masó is completely surrounded by hazelnut trees, one of the fruit trees that has suffered the most from the recent drought. There are so many in the village that one has even encroached upon the schoolyard, with the permission of the three centuries-old linden trees that watch over it and give it its name.

The school has 23 students spread across just two classes. There's the older class, with children from five different grades, and the younger class, with four different levels. This means that this Wednesday, when Martina celebrated her sixth birthday in class, she did so with three-year-old classmates. "Working here has only advantages, but if I had to mention a small drawback, it would be having so many different levels," says Carol Bujaldón, the teacher of the younger children. Before taking care of the youngest students, Carol had been the headmistress of this school, and if we go back even further, we would see her as a student. "When I was little, there was only one teacher, and in third grade, you had to go to another school," she recalls. At that time, all the children were from the village, a characteristic that has completely changed. Currently, in Til·lers, there are students who come from Tarragona or even from Salou, which is 28 kilometers away.

The person responsible for the waiting list at one of Catalonia's oldest schools is the headmistress, Aurora Roca Gayete. She began leading the school in the 2018-19 academic year and, upon taking the position, completely transformed it. Influenced by the ideas of German educator Rebeca Wild, Roca Gayete sought ways to put all her ideas into practice, and after managing a school in Pratdip and working for nine years at the Martinet School in Ripollet, she found the right approach. Upon arriving at La Masó, she immediately implemented it: "I gathered the parents and explained that we would do things differently, and I explained the reasons for the change and also that everything was backed by this and that," recalls Roca Gayete. She also told them that they would always be welcome to come and observe the classes. "We focus primarily on children, respecting their pace and giving them a lot of autonomy," she explains. In fact, autonomy is key to managing a classroom with so many different ages. The headmistress acknowledges that some people confuse these terms with a lack of boundaries: "Of course we set boundaries! If you don't set boundaries, you're not respecting them! You have to guide them and set limits, but respecting their pace," she insists. Some families in the village embraced the new project, while others weren't entirely convinced and prefer more traditional schools.

New School

The founding of this school, over a hundred years ago, also brought about pedagogical changes. The Commonwealth of Catalonia wanted to modernize the country and, in the field of education, was captivated by the Escola Nova, the pedagogical movement of the late 19th century that promoted active learning in contrast to the traditional school. The Commonwealth established four schools (one in each district) that were intended to serve as prototypes for the creation of the rest of the Catalan schools. The first of these, and the only one that still operates as a school, was the Til·lers School. Its history was interrupted during the Francoist dictatorship, which opposed the new pedagogical ideas. Even so, the school reopened in the early 1970s, thanks to the Pedagogical Renewal Movements. Since then, the Els Til·lers School, which is part of the Francolí Special Economic Zone, has experienced ups and downs, but has continued to educate the children of the village and the surrounding area.