You had a primary school teacher who, to encourage you and your classmates, told you that anything you had done was wonderful, and congratulated you for working so hard. You and your classmates scribbled and doodled, and he applauded and displayed them.

The writer and secondary school teacher Roc Casagran doesn't have many memories of primary school. He would summarize it as a few years in which he had a good time, played and enjoyed himself with friends, "which is what it was all about," he points out, and learned from his teachers: "I barely remember specific activities, except for mental calculation exercises, which I really liked. The important thing there was speed, they gave us 10 mental calculation problems and you had to answer quickly." It surprises him to remember precisely that, considering that he later leaned towards literature. "You know that adults tend to compartmentalize learning, but I like and liked reading and writing and also calculation; it's not incompatible," he assures. Until the first year of primary school he was enrolled at the Escola Nostra Llar in Sabadell. His parents have spoken to him several times about the teachers he had, wonderful professionals with whom he began the process of learning to read and write. "It's a shame I don't remember them, because I learned a lot from them," he comments. Then he went to Joanot Alisanda School, a school with a huge playground compared to the previous one, and which he took advantage of to play football: "I always stayed for lunch; this meant having more time to play and do our own thing. Playing, sweating, and having a good time." What he remembers most from this stage is when he discovered Paco Ibáñez and poetry in general. "It must have been in third or fourth grade, in Spanish class, when they played a song by Paco Ibáñez, and I loved it," he admits. Just as he is unable to name any teacher who marked him from primary school, from secondary school, at the Institut Pau Vila, also public and also from Sabadell, he already has more memories. Here he has more present the classes of the language teachers in general, and more specifically those of Antoni Dalmases, who is also a writer: "He was one of those who not only spoke to you about language and literature. I really liked the teachers who dedicated time to other topics that were not strictly the subject, they spoke about current events and dropped reflections," he comments. At the time, it seemed to him that perhaps they were not very relevant, but, even so, he was interested in the less academic "content" and especially that they treated him not as a small child, but as an almost adult. Another of the teachers who went beyond the content was the writer and Latin teacher, Antoni Pladevall, with whom they spoke about current events and politics.

Among the thousands of parenting books and manuals currently filling bookstores, we come across the brief essay In the Age of Child-Things:Ensayos contra la crianza como emprendimiento, by Santiago Gerchunoff (Buenos Aires, 1977), where the philosopher, writer, and university and high school teacher dissects modern parenting and how it has become professionalized to the point that children have turned into an object to be improved. The book is a collection of short essays he wrote some time ago while raising his daughters, who are now 13 and 19 years old, readapted with a common thread: the concept of child-things.What are thing children?

The author Regina Rodríguez Sirvent has become one of the most powerful and fun voices in Catalan literature. After the phenomenon of Les calces al sol with more than 100,000 copies sold, she is now releasing Crispetes de matinada, in which her childhood friends are crucial characters and play a decisive role in the novel's plot. Because when Regina talks about her time at school, her first thought goes directly to her friends. “School is the foundation of my deepest friendships, it's the most important thing that happened to me and I keep all my school friends. With my friends, we have been very daring and very mischievous. We even opened the teachers' lounge to look for our grades, add extra positives, and we even photocopied exams!”

Mari Pau Huguet (Estopanyà, 1963) is known for a professional life dedicated to Televisió de Catalunya. There she began her career and very likely it is also there where she will end it. But few know that she spent her entire childhood in the La Bordeta neighbourhood of Lleida. These were the sixties and seventies of the last century, when everything still happened in the street. “It was like living in a village, we didn't have a television and we spent the day playing outside the house,” recalls the journalist. These were times when she socialised with both boys and girls in all sorts of popular games, “like rope skipping, the handkerchief game and strong horse...”, she remembers.

It was during the pandemic that Núria Casas installed the TikTok app and dared to make videos caricaturing different types of mothers, teachers, or comparisons about how school was a few years ago and how it is now. A direct and realistic format that has connected enormously with the public and has become her current job as a content creator.

Lourdes Reyzábal is the president of the Raíces Foundation, which has been working for years to defend the rights of migrant minors. Also in Ceuta, where this Tuesday the Spanish government has raised to 70,000 the number of people who crossed the border from Morocco. Despite the return of the majority, there are still a thousand children and adolescents in care.

Many know the incredible story of overcoming of the Lleida pilot Isidre Esteve who, after becoming paraplegic from a motorcycle accident in 2007, it was transformed into a regular competitor in car rally raids, especially at the Dakar. But few know that his childhood in his native Oliana (in the Alt Urgell region) was crucial in forging a personality based on effort and respect for teachers and parents.

Lawyer Khaled Quzmar(1964) has been working for almost four decades to defend the rights of the Palestinian population. Executive Director of the Palestinian Centre for Child Rights (PCCR), a few days ago he visited Barcelona at the invitation of the NGO Mundubat to denounce the impact of the occupation and genocide on children in Gaza and the West Bank. He spoke to ARA before meeting with representatives of the Parliament and travelling to Madrid to meet with the Minister of Youth and Children, Sira Rego.Since October 7, 2023, more than 20,000 Palestinian minors have been killed in Gaza, 44,000 have been injured, and 58,000 have been orphaned, according to UN data.

The Barnahus, the comprehensive care service for children who have suffered sexual assault, will be opened to other types of violence to prevent them from having to go to police stations, health centers, and courts to repeat what happened to them. The model, which already has 14 centers open throughout Catalonia, has represented a radical change in traditional practices because children are in a comfortable environment, safe spaces where police officers and legal professionals carry out all the tests that will be used in case of a trial, without the need for them to testify again. The announcement was made by Teresa Llorens, Secretary of Life Cycles and Citizenship of the Generalitat, who also announced that the figure of the child advocate will be created, a reference professional to care for children under guardianship who live in a center.

My friend Alícia told me one day that she would have liked to have a village to spend the summer in. It is a very different concept to have a village than to have a second home on the beach or anywhere else. In the village you have roots, connections, you surely have relatives there or with a bit of luck your grandparents still live there. Nothing happens in the village, there isn't much and for not having, perhaps there isn't even a beach. There life stops, the days pass slowly and lazily and the day's work is just waiting for it to be less hot to go out and play in the street.

Since arriving in Barcelona, Silvia has been living with administrative irregularity. At twelve years old, she followed in the footsteps of her mother, Angela, who the summer of the pandemic emigrated from Honduras trusting that she could soon regularize her situation. Seeing that it would not be easy, she paid for the girl's plane ticket and almost two years later she landed here, unaware that sharing a bed in a rented room awaited her. She doesn't remember how many apartments she's been through, but she does remember the day she realized she would be "different", when the school planned a trip abroad and she didn't have a passport.

The parents of a three-month-old baby who died on Friday in Sabadell have been jailed this Sunday for allegedly abusing him. As the ARA has been able to confirm, the Mossos d'Esquadra arrested the parents and one of the hypotheses now being investigated is that the baby suffered violent shaking, the most frequent form of serious abuse in infants under six months old.

The Prosecutor's Office has detected new evidence of "extreme gravity" against the father imprisoned for allegedly mistreating his newborn baby of a few weeks in Barcelona, to the point that it now considers that a crime of attempted homicide could also be attributed to him. In fact, the judge of the section on violence against children and adolescents in Barcelona has agreed to keep him in prison, accused of mistreating the child, after he was arrested last March along with his wife, who is free.

Summer and heat are here, and we change our footwear, but which is the most suitable for children's feet? Podiatrist and communicator Neus Moya advises that to choose respectful footwear, you must observe that the child walks exactly the same as if they were barefoot. "The shoe must respect the shape and function of the foot. It must have an anatomical toe box and allow movement".

Almost all children in the world face at least one climate threat. But nearly half – about 1.1 billion children – are exposed to three different climate threats that put their health and survival at risk, according to the report Children’s climate risk report 2026, published this Tuesday by Unicef.

When we talk about health, we often think about habits related to diet or physical activity. However, we know well that health is a much broader concept that includes physical, emotional, social, and community dimensions. Today, in a context where data continues to alert us that children and adolescents are spending more hours in front of screens, doing less physical activity, having less healthy diets, and experiencing an increase in emotional distress, it is necessary to reinforce those spaces that contribute to their integral well-being.Summer camps and colonies are one of these privileged spaces. And precisely now, when school holidays are about to begin and the time for dolce far niente increases considerably, it is important to highlight the role they play in the health and development of children and adolescents. Because beyond being a leisure alternative when school ends, they offer educational experiences that have a direct impact on their present and future well-being.

Sílvia Munt (Barcelona, 1957) is an actress, screenwriter, and director. Last Gaudí Award of Honor. In the autumn, she will premiere a documentary film about Mercè Rodoreda and will direct the play Panorama des del pont.

She was born in the Clot neighborhood, in Barcelona. “But I spent my early childhood and also part of my adolescence in the Canary Islands, because my mother is French but her father is from the Canary Islands. On the one hand, I feel very urban, very much from the neighborhood. My father was from Clot. But, on the other hand, the island, the way of understanding life there... is important to me... And I am a bit of this mix”.

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The end of the school year is approaching, and with it, a scene that repeats in many homes with school-aged children: they arrive with various – if not many – crafts they've made at school, in after-school activities... And the questions return: what should we do with all this? Do we keep it all? Do we throw it all away? Do we leave it at home and gradually discard it after a few days without the children noticing?

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Generosity is not born out of pressure, but out of respect for children's times and needs, and out of support that sets limits with empathy and without imposition.“You must share” is one of the most repeated phrases in parks, schools, and family gatherings. It is said with good intentions, almost as an automatic response, as if it were an unquestionable rule of coexistence. But what if this ingrained demand were interfering with a much deeper learning? What if, instead of educating in generosity, we were promoting responses based on pressure, obligation, or even fear of conflict? Often behind this imperative lies the adult need to resolve situations quickly, to avoid tears or tensions, or even to look good rather than to accompany what is truly a learning process. We turn “sharing” into an immediate duty, with no room to understand what the child is feeling or what they need. And in this apparently harmless gesture, we may be overlooking a key opportunity: to help them build, at their own pace, an authentic understanding of what it means to give, to wait, and to consider others.Sharing is not a simple or spontaneous gesture, no matter how often we take it for granted. It is a complex skill that is built up little by little and involves a whole series of internal learning processes: recognizing that others also have desires and needs, understanding that giving something up does not equate to losing it forever, learning to wait without anxiety, reading the emotions of others, and, above all, feeling that what is one's own is protected. Without this foundation of security, genuine generosity can hardly emerge.

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