At school, democracy is at stake

The teachers' strikes currently underway in Catalonia and the Valencian Country are transcendent events, in the sense that they go beyond their guild dimension (which is also fundamental and, of course, entirely respectable) and bring to the center of public conversation issues that affect us all. Issues such as what kind of society we want to have, and also how we want this society to be governed, and according to what values and with what idea of the future. Of course, it also points to what future we want, as citizens of the Catalan Countries, for our language and culture, and for our viability as a cultural community in the world of technofascism. Universal public education until the age of sixteen, and in Catalan, are recent achievements that have brought about great progress for a society that largely defines itself as democratic. Not only that, but —in Catalonia, in the Valencian Country, and in the Balearic Islands— this society has had as its central nerve the awareness of being a democracy still fragile in many aspects (the weight of a Civil War, a fascist military dictatorship, and a democracy born with all sorts of servitudes to the previous regime is burdensome) and, in response to this fragility, the will to deepen, precisely, in democracy. This means in the knowledge, defense, and respect of citizens' rights and freedoms. To advance in this democratic deepening, public education in Catalan has played a fundamental role.Today it is more than ever, because the will to live in democracy is seriously questioned for the first time. That is why it is a serious mistake, or a too dark bad faith, for elected rulers to present teachers and professors as enemies (as the PP and Vox do in the Valencian Country) or as an extremist collective that makes unreasonable demands (as the socialist Government does in Catalonia). Trying to reduce or caricature their demands as a simple matter of so much money per month or year, besides being disrespectful, is to distort the content of protests that reflect a long-standing discontent and in which all governments —regional and state— that have existed until now have a part of responsibility. Disdaining teachers, or wanting to get by with an agreement with large but minority unions within the sector, or —much worse still— infiltrating police officers into assemblies and then asking for half apologies, are gestures between a lack of respect and authoritarianism.

The Catalan strike is seventeen days until the end of the school year, three of which are a general education strike. The Valencian strike is indefinite. These are protests that show a very high level of commitment from those who call and maintain them. We expect at least an equivalent level of commitment from the rulers who must respond to them. What is at stake is not just working conditions, it is our future as a Catalan-speaking democratic society.