Education will air-condition 100 centers in two academic years and calculates that adapting all classrooms will cost 2.5 billion

BarcelonaThe Department of Education will air-condition a hundred educational centers over the next two school years. This was explained this Sunday by the Director General of Public Centers of the Generalitat, Montserrat Duran Tauleria, in an interview with 3Cat. Duran also asserted that, according to the department's calculations, the investment in air conditioning for all Catalan educational centers "will surely not be less than 2.5 billion euros." The figure doubles the latest estimate, published this June in a report by Equitat.org (formerly Fundació Bofill), which estimated it between 500 million and 1.3 billion.

Duran acknowledged that it is necessary to invest in classrooms to address "the situations of extreme temperatures" experienced there, aggravated by the effect of the climate crisis. "Over the last 20 years, climate investment in educational centers has been low," she said, and admitted that there are also "deficits" in the enclosures and insulation of school buildings. These elements are where the most intervention has taken place so far, and during this summer, fans have also been installed in 227 educational centers. Duran also confirmed that there are plans to install ventilation systems in 150 more centers between the end of this year and early 2027.

The Director General did not want to specify how many of the centers in the educational network are suffering from serious situations, arguing that factors such as the location of the center, the orientation of the building, and the way it was built influence this. In any case, Duran asserted that there is not a single one that is prepared for "extreme situations" like those being experienced in some schools.

As ARA explained, one in four centers in Catalonia was built before the 60s, when the way of building focused on keeping heat in during the winter, orienting buildings to the south to gain light and degrees, taking into account that during the months of highest temperatures, July and August, the centers would be empty. But over the years and with the climate emergency, episodes of extreme heat have become increasingly frequent, and nowadays it is impossible for days of intense heat not to coincide with the school calendar.