In June, it took its toll on Barcelona's kindergartens: faults in the air conditioning systems have multiplied the effects of the heat in the classrooms, where in many cases temperatures reached almost thirty degrees. The inability to respond to this problem, beyond distributing penguins—portable air conditioners—to the affected centers, has forced the City Council to process an emergency plan to address it.

The 103 public nursery schools in Barcelona have decided not to follow the new school calendar announced by the Generalitat and start next academic year on September 12, and not on September 5 as the rest of Catalonia will do. ARA has learnt this is the proposal that Barcelona City Council has put forward to the nursery schools teachers unions, after they joined the strike days in March, sparked by changes to the school calendar but which also demanded better working conditions. The City Council is confident it will reach an agreement with CCOO, UGT, CSIF and CGT, as it was the unions themselves who asked for a one-year moratorium to the changes in the school year.

Today was the first of the five days of industrial action called by education unions in this month of March. Unions called for mass participation to protest against the Education Department's policies and to demand improvements to the sector. At the moment, union USTEC claims that participation has been massive and exceeded expectations. The unions estimate that around 60% of school teachers have taken part in the strike, whereas Aspepc, a secondary school teachers' union, believes it is 75%. The Education Department, however, says that only 31.3% of state school teachers struck, according to data reported by 87.5% of school. At chartered schools, only 8.7% of teachers went on strike, according to data reported by 69.7% of schools. The unions claim more workers would have gone on strike had it not been for "abusive" minimum services requirements, but even so they claim the demonstration is "historical" and the strike "very massive".