Smart popcorn, superheroes and superheroines

There are many things that do work well. On Friday I saw one. Martí Roura Mora, a young primary school teacher, invited me to cross the street where we have the ARA editorial office and enter the building opposite, where the Milà i Fontanals Infant and Primary School and the Miquel Tarradell Institute are located, in a noucentista building, with its sgraffito and its sgraffito sun.

I was led into a bright and colourful room where they have cellos, violas and violins lined up neatly on the wall, stored in sturdy and friendly cases, and played by the students for an hour every day. Soon after, around thirty or so 8-year-old boys and girls from the Smart Popcorn and Superheroes and Superheroines classes entered, who are discovering what we call "news" and must make a diary and a newscast.

You should have seen them, with your eyes wide open and all your attention, some scoundrels speaking in Catalan, a language that they are placing alongside Spanish, English and the language they speak at home, whether it is Bengali, Urdu, Tagalog, Arabic or Amazigh. They are doing so well at school that more than one of them has asked the teachers why they cannot go on Saturdays and Sundays.

Then I went to the centre's theatre, where the sixth-grade students were waiting for me, with whom we also talked about news, and about the present and the future, about their future, which will be ours. And I assure you that if we manage to maintain the enthusiasm, the interest, the civic spirit, the profession and the love that I saw on Friday in the building opposite the newspaper, things will go very well for Catalonia.