Once a week, seventy preschool and primary school children at the Betània-Patmos school in Barcelona's Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district participate in a midday chess session. This activity has been offered as an extracurricular activity by the school to students from the fourth grade onward since 2011. "Parents really like it because it helps clear their minds and concentrate. But the children are also drawn to it," says Uriel Jiménez, the school's extracurricular coordinator. He adds that this is because the instructors teach chess using a playful methodology. For this reason, he says, it's one of the extracurricular activities with a higher enrollment rate than dropout rate throughout the school year. The Betània-Patmos school is one of 150 educational centers in the metropolitan area where the Catalan Chess School (ECADE) teaches chess. In most schools, chess is offered as an extracurricular activity, although some centers also hold regular classes during school hours and others offer occasional workshops. ECADE was founded in 2022 through the merger of two existing chess schools: the Barcelona Chess School and the Miguel Illescas Chess School. It also functions as an academy, with around 80 children attending afternoon classes at its premises, and as a club, with 40 members. In addition, they organize chess, board game, and strategy camps during Christmas, Easter, and summer breaks. In total, they have 38 instructors on staff who teach chess to 4,000 students each year.

Death is a taboo subject in our society, especially when it affects children or young people. This has many repercussions. Some are more symbolic, such as the fact that there isn't a word to describe someone who has lost a son or daughter—there are words for someone who loses a partner or a child who loses a parent. Others have a greater impact on the daily lives of those affected. For example, when a person loses a son or daughter, they can take two days of leave from work. The same number of days as leave for moving and far fewer than the 15 days of leave for a wedding. Another reflection is the limited support that families grieving the death of a child receive from the public system. Mireia Rosés lost her six-year-old son, Jan, in June 2024. She recalls that at the Parc Taulí Hospital in Sabadell, where he died, a child psychologist saw her and her husband a couple of times, but couldn't provide follow-up care. At their local primary care center (CAP) in Terrassa, they weren't given an appointment until October, and they only had two half-hour visits with the psychologist. Fortunately, that same month they received a call from the bereavement support team at the pediatric palliative care unit of Vall d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona. They were invited to participate in a support group for families who had suffered the same loss, and after the first session, they were also offered individual support. For the past year, Mireia, her husband, and their five-year-old daughter have been attending individual sessions and, in the case of the girl, group sessions for couples, families, and siblings. "It has saved my life." Mireia is quite emphatic when she talks about what this support has given her. "You feel alone, you feel like you can't talk to anyone because, despite having many people who want to support you and who do, they can't understand you because they haven't been through the same thing. Until you find someone who has experienced it, you feel misunderstood," she says. She affirms that participating in these groups and in individual sessions with the team's professionals has helped her understand that she must move forward and that she can. "And it has helped my daughter realize that she's not the only child in the world who has lost a sibling, that there are other girls and boys in the same situation, and that she can share it," she adds.

Nowadays it is difficult to imagine a school without a canteen, especially in urban environments. The lunchtime is essential for families to be able to balance their work schedules with the students' school hours. For many families, it is almost a necessity. In addition, the canteen is a space that contributes to guaranteeing a healthy and balanced diet for schoolchildren. However, it is not part of the school schedule and no regulations require it to be part of the school's educational project.