Today is the first of the 17 days of strikes that teachers have called. Their stoppage not only impacts students and families who are left without classes: at a quarter past seven in the morning, the striking teachers have cut off traffic in places like Mataró, Manresa, Vic, and especially, at the entrances to Barcelona, very particularly on the Ronda de Dalt, and then in the city center. Among teachers there is the conviction that it is now or never, that they have been holding up the educational system for a long time, that they do not have reinforcements in classrooms, that they are increasingly complex, and that salaries are low considering the responsibility they have, and that while the salaries of the Mossos have been reviewed, those of teachers have not.Regarding this, today we publish this interview with the spokesperson for USTEC, Iolanda Segura, with a very clear headline: “With 400 euros per month we could talk about raising the protest”. Pay attention, however, to a couple of details. First, the nuance. The spokesperson says: “If it is scheduled that 200 euros are already this first year and then the rest in two or three more years, we could finish negotiating and see what the collective tells us. But what is non-negotiable is 200 euros in four years, which everyone knows perfectly well that it neither places us at the forefront of salaries in the rest of the communities nor reverses the salary loss”. And the other detail is that it's not all about salaries. What else could provoke the protest? The union leader says: “Regarding staff numbers, the agreement includes a series of measures that we negotiated ourselves, such as reducing ratios and providing resources for educational centers and for inclusive education. We are talking about figures that are both labor and teaching, special education educators, integration specialists, TEEI (specialist technician in early childhood education) and psychopedagogues”. It is important to note, therefore, that teachers are demanding improvements that go beyond economic ones. I say this because the polarization, for and against teachers, without nuances, which mixes things like having two months of vacation, has reached the dozens of comments the news has received.I believe it is fundamental that we look further, and of course, do so without starting from likes or dislikes. It may be annoying that they block traffic or demand more money, but teachers are focusing on a core problem, that of education. A problem means what is taught, how it is taught, and what educational and future job value for students the content taught in Catalan schools has. If we talk about education, for a long time now no one here is happy: the Government wants to reverse the results of the PISA report, we have concluded that the teaching career is neither sufficiently demanding nor sufficiently recognized, the postal district weighs heavily on the students' school reality, the job market cannot find well-prepared people... And it's not new, it's been a long time that with all kinds of governments, teaching has been fertile ground for the dissatisfaction of its protagonists. And thus, as a society, we cannot continue. And the Government, even less so. What a mistake it was to bring the spotlights and cameras to the signing of an agreement with unions that were not the majority ones, as if to say that everything is fine, madam baroness. Well, no, it is not, and we will hear about it during 17 days of strike, three of which are general education strikes, between now and the end of the school year.Good morning.

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.