The problem –or at least part of it– of education in Catalonia has erupted publicly and noisily. After tug-of-war with the unions, the collective has called for several days of strike in the sector, with harsh mobilizations that have led to the blocking of streets and communication routes. Educational stoppages create a certain social alarm, as well as practical problems for families. A delicate issue in which the Government has reached an agreement with the less representative unions, but the main one, USTEC, has been left out, which has seized the opportunity to claim and reinforce its hegemony. Educational demands are almost always sympathetic to a good part of the citizenry. It is assumed that these are mobilizations to improve the conditions of their work, and this seems to be beyond discussion, just as farmers mobilize, who always have unquestioned support. Certainly, both education and healthcare have lacked the economic and personnel resources they need for many years, the minimum means to continue playing their role as pillars of the welfare state. Schools have been excessively equipped with technology, but the profession and consideration of teachers has not been dignified, nor has sufficient personnel been provided – reinforcements – to assume the diverse and demanding reality of multiculturalism in schools. The weak point of the mobilization is that it may seem excessively corporatist and dominated by salary concerns. By the way, a reasonable claim to the extent that we want to incentivize the best graduates towards teaching. Communicatively, the convening union has shot itself in the foot by implying that a rapid end to the discussion would be brought about by a monthly increase of 400 euros in their salary.In the context of the current conflict, the issue of the Mossos d’Esquadra in schools has served to worsen the atmosphere. Here the matter is not relevant in itself, but rather due to somewhat deficient communication. A topic prone to demagoguery, as has been seen. That schools should be areas for detecting security problems should not make us cry foul. The Mossos are logically responsible for prevention, and they need to get ahead of some things. The anti-police discourse that has been launched, even from the institutes themselves, is quite stale. Police forces are essential and should not be characterized as if they were still the Francoist “grisos” (grey ones). It is not a topic that yields much, nor is the presence in teacher assemblies, even though they could have avoided it. There has been a lack of tact in the methods, in the information provided, and especially in the lack of discretion. All this has shifted the focus from the educational issue, as if the problem were only a matter of money and public security. Now, these are the trees in the front line; they prevent us from seeing the forest. The debate should focus on the structural and systemic problems of education, on a model that has turned out to be, and not only in Catalonia, a complete failure and that hardly anyone seems willing to address.

Recover purchasing power and a shock plan to strengthen inclusive education. These are the two "main immediate priorities" of the negotiation framework that USTEC – the majority union in the education sector – has submitted to the Government with the aim of "unblocking the educational conflict". In a statement made public the day before the meeting between the Ministry of Education and the union forces, USTEC proposes a dozen measures focused on inclusive education and recalls that 40% of students have specific educational support needs, mostly for socioeconomic reasons. "Without a shock plan to strengthen staff and inclusive education, there will be no agreement," it assures. It also insists that "any proposal" will have to be ratified by the collective in a consultation and that it will not endorse any agreement "behind the backs of the centers or without the direct validation of the people who have sustained the mobilization".

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.

"We will resist to the maximum." The slogan among Valencian teachers seems clear after the success of the first day of the indefinite strike that began this Monday. According to the Generalitat, 50.12% of teachers have supported the strike, a figure that unions raise to 90%. All this in a context with high minimum services imposed by the education department, which in the case of second-year baccalaureate teachers has been 100%. According to the Valencian government, which has obtained the approval of the Superior Court of Justice, it is necessary to ensure that students are evaluated with a view to the selectivity exam that will take place in June.

L'ARA interviews Iolanda Segura, spokesperson for USTEC, a few hours before the general strike in the Catalan education sector begins and after the controversies over the infiltration of two Mossos d'Esquadra agents at a teachers' assembly and the pilot test that plans to integrate an undercover agent in some centers to improve coexistence.

Since two agents of the Mossos d'Esquadra disguised themselves in a teachers' assembly where future strikes in the education sector were being discussed —an action that has generated harsh criticism from opposition parties—, the Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, had limited herself to supporting the Catalan police and endorsing the explanations provided by the police force. This Monday, however, she has gone a little further: she has announced that in the coming hours the "opportunity and proportionality" of this police action will be assessed, which has coincided with a period of teacher mobilizations to force new negotiations with the Department of Education for the improvement of the collective's working conditions.

The conflict between the education sector and the Government escalates one more degree and shakes parliamentary politics. With the new wave of mobilizations underway, and amidst the controversy over the pilot test to introduce plainclothes police officers in schools and institutespilot test to introduce plainclothes police officers in schools and institutes, the unions denounced this Thursday the infiltration of two Mossos agents into an assembly of teachers who were preparing the next strike days. The indignation of the sector has been joined by calls for explanations from the opposition, and ERC, the Comuns, and the CUP have already called for the dismissal of the police chief, Josep Lluís Trapero. For the moment, the police force defends that it acts "always in accordance with current legislation" and the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, has defended its "professionalism".

The Spanish government is shining with the public differences of opinion maintained by the Ministries of Health and Defense on whether quarantine is mandatory or not for people who have been in contact with infected individuals by hantavirus. And it is true that the procedures for the outbreak were activated late and poorly, and here we are, urgently searching for passengers who were in contact with the infected and counting cases of people who have isolated themselves in Singapore or are under surveillance in the United States. But what I find unbearable is the political outcry, practically hysteria, surrounding the case. The Canary Islands government does not want the ship in port (as if they were not bringing the affected people to port); Ayuso – who is now dedicated to imitating Pedro Sánchez to play on the international stage as a reference for the most rancid right-wing and goes to Mexico to defend Hernán Cortés to see if she provokes a global scandal – wonders why they have to bring affected people to Madrid (as if they didn't have a reference hospital there), and the PP goes around shouting "This is chaos!" It is a shame, because we know that hantavirus is not like covid – the WHO has said so –, and we live in a developed country, a member of the European Union, with the capacity to treat this disease. We come from a pandemic in which many people suffered a lot and became very anxious, which triggered mental illnesses, and now what would be appropriate would be to have a sense of state. When a crisis is still open, one must think twice about the messages and leave the criticism for when it is resolved.Regarding open crises, the war in Iran continues but has already reached levels of confusion that begin to resemble that Gila war, where a general would pick up the phone and ask for the enemy. At this moment, officially, the ceasefire holds, but the United States and Iran continue to exchange attacks. Trump doesn't know how to end this war, to which he was dragged by Israel, which is making gasoline more expensive for him and, therefore, angering his voters. That's why he continues to say things from the height of a bell tower, opening controversies and alternative fires, such as when he said that the Pope was endangering many Catholics because he didn't care if Iran had the atomic bomb. But the Pope put him in his place with a sentence destined to go down in the history of his pontificate: “If anyone wants to criticize me for announcing the Gospel, let them do so with the truth, because the Church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons for years, and there is no doubt about it.” Very well said.Another political crisis: teaching unions have reported detecting undercover police officers at teachers' assemblies. An explanation from the Government is urgently needed. It would be unacceptable, typical of an authoritarian regime. This morning, when asked about the matter on SER, President Illa brushed it off saying the minister would provide explanations, implying the president knows nothing and has no reason to know anything. It doesn't look good, especially in the midst of the labor conflict between teachers and the department, as it seems they were spying on them. I certainly think explanations are needed.

Important change in the awarding of teaching positions for the next academic year. The Department of Education has modified the resolution that set the criteria for determining the distribution of vacant positions in schools and institutes among teachers and professors for the 2026-2027 academic year. As ARA has been able to confirm, the novelty is that, unlike what was specified in the initial resolution, next academic year principals will be able to make continuity proposals for interim teachers. That is, a principal can propose that an interim teacher who is already at their school can continue teaching in the same school or institute for the next academic year.

Our cousins from Morocco told us that at school they received physical punishment, whether it was a shove from time to time or blows with a ruler on the palm of the hand. We, who had loving and close teachers, were dying of fear imagining those punishments, but it was even more terrible to know that if the boy or girl came home complaining about a teacher's slap, what happened was that the father gave them another without even asking what had caused the reprimand. Fortunately, that way of linking violence with teaching has long been left behind and no one believes that blood is needed to make letters enter any human being. In that context, the authority of teachers was imposed by force and it was fear that led to respecting it. Rereading Montserrat Roig's stories about terrifying nuns who educated her is a good way to understand this world that some have never experienced.

Today is the first day of the teachers' strikes with which the school year will end badly. There are conversations between the Government and the teachers' unions, but publicly we are still in the phase of a tug-of-war between the two positions and, therefore, the end of the conflict is not in sight. The counselor went to TV3 this morning, she put on a brave face (as President Illa did in the last control session) and, apparently, we are in a “let's see who lasts longer”. And, despite everything, the Government is seeing firsthand the bitter reality of all the governments that have preceded it: Catalonia is very poorly financed and has no more room for maneuver.The future hangs from the school, which is almost like saying that everything hangs from it, including that of the Catalan language. In recent times, worried voices are heard about the ease with which Catalan-speaking children from Catalan-speaking families play, sing, and communicate in Spanish, or switch languages very easily, and there are people who suggest whether it would be better to separate students by language, so that teaching in Catalan is as little interfered with as possible. On this, I recommend the article signed today by political scientist Jordi Muñoz, which, under the title “Linguistic segregation?”, provides some data: Catalan is not losing speakers, it continues to gain new ones, but it lives in contact with a language, Spanish, which is gaining even more, and all the new Catalan speakers, of which there are some, do not compensate for the growth of the Spanish-speaking population. But Muñoz also says that “reducing contact between linguistic communities would further limit the incorporation of new speakers”. And he concludes by adding a surprising piece of data: “If only a third of Catalan speakers stopped switching languages when interacting with Spanish speakers, this would have the same impact on the social use of the language as a 10 percentage point increase in the demographic weight of Catalan speakers”. So, if only one third of Catalans kept speaking Catalan, this would have the effect of 10% more Catalan speakers. It would be good for Professor Muñoz to develop the idea, but it has to do with an empirical evidence that Carme Junyent already spoke about, who in an interview with Vilaweb four years ago said the following: “The best thing Catalan has now, and which is the great hope, is that more than half of those who speak it do not have it as their first language. This is a gift that is difficult to achieve.” And she added: “Therefore, we should know how to value the fact that so many people have made the effort to learn Catalan, with all the dimension it has. But this means that we need a little patience, that we must be open to the possibility that they do not speak well while they speak. If people speak and we give them the opportunity to do so because we don't change languages, they will end up speaking well.”  We have said here many times that if Catalan is not legally essential to earn a living, it has a harder time being hegemonic. And that it is unfair to have to demand individual attitudes to make efforts that Spanish speakers do not have to make. But no one said that life was fair, much less perfect. It's no use demanding everything without doing anything. Or not doing much. And this, as Carme Junyent said: “Basically, it means always speaking in Catalan. Speaking in Catalan by default and if there are problems, we will solve them.”Good morning.

The education sector launches a new cycle of mobilizations in defense of public education. On the eve of Thursday's strike day in early childhood education (0-3) –the first of seventeen called for next month across all educational stages–, teachers have staged various traffic disruptions, protests, and actions in schools since early this morning.

The tentacles of the housing crisis reach every corner of collective life. According to data obtained by ARA, the loss of school-age population in Barcelona is consolidating as a trend. Enrollment in early childhood education (3-year-olds, I3) has once again dropped to pandemic levels. It is worrying. And, at the same time, it is not easy to reverse, as we are talking about a structural socioeconomic reality.

Like a World War II machine gun auctioned at a pacifist market, the culture of effort is being talked about again. Rat-a-tat-tat. But the body is dead. Effort and culture are needed to talk about this. And there is none. At least not in supermarkets. In other words: the culture of effort begins in the placenta. Even before. But let's take a step forward and go to P3.

First confirmations from the Government regarding educational centers that have requested to withdraw from the pilot plan that contemplated sending a plainclothes Mossos d'Esquadra officer to the centers to improve coexistence. Sources from the Department of Education have confirmed that the ministry has received the formal request from two centers not to participate in the pilot project for school coexistence. They are a center in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat and another in Tàrrega. In parallel, however, the ministry has informed that the pilot plan will add a new center in Baix Llobregat that has asked the Government to join. Therefore, despite criticism of the measure and requests from some faculty meetings to abandon the plan, at this time the program will go from having 14 centers to having 13 participants.

One month after resigning as director general of Concerted and Private Centers for personal reasons, Xavier Güell has been hired as an advisor to President Salvador Illa. As stated in this Wednesday's Official Gazette of the Generalitat (DOGC), Güell has been appointed "advisor to the president on messaging," a position attached to the Directorate General of Strategy, Analysis and Prospecting, which falls under the Department of the Presidency.

The socialist Government of Salvador Illa is ostentatiously stumbling over education. It is not new. The republican government of Aragonès, with counselor González-Cambray at the head of the department, also stumbled over it. But in reality, and this is the most serious thing, it is the whole country, the whole society, the future of our country, that is stumbling over education.Let's go step by step. Look at this page: Salvador Illa assumes the challenge of teachers. The president defends the agreement with CCOO and UGT and without USTEC. We have a labor dispute with the teachers that in the month and a half remaining of the course will provide us with 17 days of various strikes, about five per school center. So we have a Government that is playing hardball (negotiating stance) but which has made the mistake of overestimating the importance of a pact with unions that, in education, are not the majority. This, at a time when almost half of the aspiring teachers have failed the aptitude test. Only 54% of students have passed the exams to be able to take the selectivity exam and access education degrees. The good part is that we have tests that filter the most capable students. The bad part is that such generally low grades say something worrying about how competent students arrive at our universities.While we are still pondering this news, we turn the page and find that the industry warns that with the current training they cannot fill 15,000 positions a year. In other words, we have jobs, but we don't have prepared people. And Catalan industry has been like this for decades. Well, it is in the midst of all this that the Government wants to incorporate Mossos into schools, in plain clothes, to help teachers with security and mediation tasks. The debate in Parliament yesterday went like this: Salvador Illa: I accept that you don't see what this is about, I accept it. If I had seen what this is about, as president, I would say let's go ahead and do it throughout Catalonia. We are saying "let's do a proof of concept". This is what we are saying. And if the centers don't want to do it, it won't be done. What fear do they have of trying it?Mònica Sales : In schools, authority is needed, yes. That of the teachers, not that of the police. They already do a good job where it matters.Jéssica Albiach: These centers do not need police officers. What they need are psychologists, social educators, integrators, to lower the ratios, for the coordinators of coexistence and well-being to have exclusive dedication and specific training, and for the Plan against Child Poverty to work. That is what they need.Pilar Castillejo : You are assuming a mental framework and a way of doing things that is not characteristic of public school, but rather of the far right.Amidst a conflict with teachers, amidst very unpromising results from aspiring teachers or students in PISA tests, and from batches of graduates facing the labor needs of the industry, the Government opens the can of worms of having Mossos in schools and finds, of course, that teachers are asking for more specialists, not security personnel, no matter how much mediation they know how to do (which the Mossos do) and that it is done in other countries. It has been decades that something is not going well in the education of this country, which has to do with growing social complexity, the social valuation of the work of teachers, the constant changes in educational laws, the economic and material resources available, the unionization of their demands, the difficulty for dialogue in a world that feels unfairly criticized and is very susceptible to any external force. Finding trust and consensus to improve education is a matter of life or death for the country.Good morning.

The Margarida Xirgu institute in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat has requested to withdraw from the Education and Interior plan that includes integrating an undercover police officer at the center, as confirmed by sources from the center and unions to ARA. The move was announced by CUP in the Parliament plenary session this Wednesday, although, for the moment, the Department of Education has not confirmed the step.

We are not getting out of the complicated loop of the educational crisis. After the announcement of the super-strike, which for the moment has only served to confirm the clash between the Government and the majority union, USTEC, two more pieces of news highlight the complicated panorama with education as a visible symptom of the country's crisis.

The Margarida Xirgu Institute in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat has requested to withdraw from the plan by Education and Interior that foresees the integration of an undercover police officer in schools, as confirmed by center and union sources to ARA. The move was announced by the CUP in the plenary session of the Parliament this Wednesday, stating that a school in the municipality had requested to withdraw from the pilot program. For now, however, the Department of Education has not confirmed the step. In the same vein, sources from USTEC – the majority union in the education sector – also point out that some schools in Vic have also informed Educational Inspection that they wish to stop being part of the pilot program.