Teachers are holding the first of three days of general strike this Tuesday in a month, to which other days of localized stoppages will be added. It will be the most educationally and organizationally complicated end of the school year in many years. It remains to be seen what the follow-up by teachers will be and how families will react. Will they, one and all, follow the rhythm of such extensive and intensive, such demanding protests? It is true that there is a feeling of tiredness and disappointment in the professional collective that has led to this situation, but it is equally logical and natural to think that the majority desire a return to normality: the climate of protest also wears down, and in the medium term it can become unsustainable.
As for the Government, for the moment, after the agreement reached with the minority unions in the education sector (CCOO and UGT), it does not seem to have much budgetary capacity to go much further in negotiations nor any incentive to sit at a table where on the other side there is an alternative of maximums. The majority union, USTEC, which is leading the protest, faces the conflict with narrow negotiating room. Its national spokesperson argues in ARA that only a minimum increase of 400 euros per month per teacher would lead to the strikes being called off.
USTEC therefore maintains the standoff with the Illa executive, which it sees as weakened in the face of the teaching collective and in the face of society due to the controversial infiltration of Mossos d'Esquadra agents into an educational assembly to prepare for the protests, and also due to the entry of plainclothes police officers into some problematic centers. Indeed, the Government, in these two cases, has acted at least precipitously and has explained itself very poorly.
This has only made things worse. The entrenchment is as evident as it is worrying. If an unlikely turn of events doesn't happen right now, there will hardly be educational pax before the summer. And with all certainty we will head towards a resumption of the course in September under the same terms with which this one will have ended: labor confrontation, strikes, loss of school days, frustration among teachers, impotence of the administration, concern in families... It is difficult to think that academic results will not suffer. The strained climate does not help teachers to do their job nor boys and girls to take learning seriously. It is the worst possible scenario. How long will we continue on this slope of confrontation without a horizon?
The educational crisis in Catalonia is profound. It is, in fact, a deep, multifactorial global crisis – technological changes, changes in family habits, social precariousness, loss of authority of parents and teachers, new methodologies not always well assimilated, etc. – which, however, in other latitudes is being addressed with a positive and proactive spirit, but which here, due to the mix of labor issues with strictly educational ones, is leading us to an increasingly dangerous dead end. The spiral of conflict bodes no good.
