Salt is known today as the municipality with the lowest per capita income in Catalonia. Also one of the towns with the highest concentration of migrant population: nearly 40% of residents are of foreign nationality. But what headlines have overlooked in recent years is that almost half of this town's surface is still orchards and pastures. The Monar canal, parallel to the Ter river, marks the border between the built-up Salt and the agricultural zone. Few facilities surpass it, except for a large institute built on fertile land. Located on the border with Girona, surrounded by greenery and with magnificent views of the Mare de Déu del Mont, lies Vallvera. A secondary and vocational training center with more than 1,200 students, inaugurated in 2008, which contrasts with its surroundings by being a large gray sheet metal center with a concrete-filled courtyard. "In winter it's a refrigerator and in summer an oven, there's no in-between!", laments the director, Ferran Maimir, who started this academic year with a direction very focused on working for the renaturalization of the courtyard, but with a different method: that the students themselves build the shade with their hands.

We live in strange times: hatred has become a national pastime. It doesn't take much to ignite it: three headlines, two talk shows, and a couple of tweets, and suddenly half the country is judging the other half from the comfort of their sofas, with pre-packaged opinions. Curiously, in this race to point fingers, schools are always mentioned. As if the social fracture were the fault of a poorly corrected dictation or a badly presented media project.

Some families know exactly which school they want for their children, while others begin an intense research process after a positive pregnancy test. My first thought would be that the perfect school doesn't exist. Just like perfect parents and the perfect job don't exist. There will always be something that feels off, and you'll have to define your true red lines. I do think it's very important to consider different educational options and visit more than one school, whether at open houses or by having a personal interview. Let's be honest, if we go to different dealerships to buy a car, this infinitely more important task requires our time and a clear understanding of the school where we'll pre-enroll.

Talking about discipline in the classroom still opens a debate charged with emotions and often opposing perspectives. Just ask Mar Hurtado, president of the Rosa Sensat Teachers Association, after her remarks against discipline on the program. The Jungle on Catalan public television. Some associate it with memories of rigid authority, imposed silences, and severe punishments, while others claim it as an essential condition for learning. The truth is that, throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, the concept of discipline in school has evolved as clearly as modern societies have.

We've only just restarted the school year. As teams of teachers, we begin each September with a whole new set of intentions and goals. Sometimes we think and write so much that we leave no room to listen to the identities of the children and young people in front of us or to talk about what's happening beyond the boundaries of the school, in the neighborhood, in the town, in the world.

As a parent and teacher, the start of the new school year raises questions to which I have no clear answers. For example, will students remember anything they learned when they return from vacation? Will we be able to make classes more than just fun? Will they want to learn when everything is just a click away? Will we be able to instill in them a culture of effort and the need to interpret, memorize, and acquire new concepts? Will we have families on our side, or will they be suspicious when we demand our rights? Will we be able to ensure that bureaucracy doesn't drain teachers' energy and that they can focus on student progress?

The start of classes in Catalonia is fast approaching. We review the key dates for the 2025-2026 school year, which is marked by a significant drop in student numbers in the region's schools and secondary schools and a complete ban on cell phones in classrooms.

The rise of far-right thinking in our society has consequences that also affect life in schools. But what we should ask ourselves is whether we, at school, are sufficiently effective in counterbalancing this ideological trend, or whether we are unwittingly fueling it.

The case occurred two academic years ago, and they are still suffering the consequences: "It's about two girls, sisters. They were at home when their family was evicted and they saw the police vans and the judicial procession arrive, enter their house, and evict them. Two city workers took them to school. They arrived at a safe school and were taken to a worker; they didn't arrive at a safe school and were taken to a worker. When they were late, they had no home to return to." Anna Pérez, director of the Jacint Verdaguer School in the Poble-sec neighborhood of Barcelona, recounts this case, still emotional. "There's always a case that makes you jump, that makes you say enough, and for us, this was it," she continues. This year, there are 18 other students at the school in the same situation, in the midst of eviction proceedings.

Only five of the 16 schools in Catalonia that used to separate students by sex will remain. The Institució Familiar d'Educació group, which manages ten schools in Catalonia, has announced that its secondary school groups will go co-ed as of next year. The measure, advanced by Diari de Girona, affects the centers of La Farga in Sant Cugat del Vallès (until now only for boys), La Vall (until now only for girls), Les Alzines (for girls) and Bell-lloc del Pla (for boys) in Girona and Institució Tarragona (formed by schools Aura, for girls, and Turó, for boys), and adds to what had already been done by schools in Igualada (Montclar and Mistral) and Lleida (Terraferma and Arabell). In total, there will remain five schools in Catalonia that will separate boys and girls, and they are the ones most closely linked to Opus Dei: Xaloc and Pineda, in L'Hospitalet; Viaró, in Sant Cugat; Camp Joliu, in L'Arboç, and Canigó, in Barcelona