Teachers at the school where the teacher was stabbed report receiving threats.

Barcelona"He's clever." This is the phrase he heard on Tuesday. a teacher from the La Mina School Institute (Sant Adrià de Besòs) just before being stabbed twice. Although the injuries were not serious and the perpetrator was not a student, the incident was the final straw. Two days after the attack, the school's teaching staff issued a statement stating that they suffer daily "disrespect, threats, and physical and verbal attacks." They denounce that they work "with increasingly worsening levels of aggression and violence" and that they are encountering "a lack of effective response from the administration."

In a joint statement from the entire educational community, including the school's management, they insist that "the intolerable physical attack" suffered by their colleague on Tuesday "must be a turning point" and have therefore called for a demonstration this Friday at 12 noon in the Plaza Maria Àngels Rosell Simpli. The demonstration brought together more than 300 people, including teachers, students, families, and neighbors, who denounced how the violence experienced at the school "is not only directed at the faculty, but at the entire educational community, which also includes students, teachers, supervisors, administrative staff, and support services." They also warned that the situation is not unique to this school. but there have also been episodes in other centers.

The teachers who signed the statement say they feel "vulnerable" and call for "the competent authorities to assume responsibility" and a plan to improve coexistence in the neighborhood to end impunity, since an attack was also recently reported at the CAP de la Mina.

This vulnerability pointed out in the statement has clear examples. As detailed by professionals from the institute in the ARA, after the attack, some teachers have encountered threats and mockery of the attack from some students. "We have a very strong feeling of insecurity," laments one of the teachers, who explains how "some of the students" are trivializing the attack and making comments to the teachers like "I wish it had been you" or "They are telling me that you will be next." "What we don't accept is that, given this situation, they're telling us we can teach normally. We don't feel supported by the school administration or anyone else," the teacher insists.

Normalize threats

In the statement released Thursday by the teaching staff, the teachers maintain that they do not want to normalize "the conditions in which we work and live." According to one of these teachers, it is precisely normalizing "unacceptable behavior" that has led them to the current situation. "There have been daily insults and disrespect. I myself have received death threats from students who tell me I won't make it to Saturday. The problem is that it happens so often that you normalize it and believe it will never materialize," laments the teacher, who asserts that there have also been incidents in which some teachers have been pushed or hit.

When asked by this newspaper, the Department of Education stated that it would not comment on the situation at the La Mina School Institute and simply reiterated that, following the attack at the school, the protocols of the Emotional Well-being Program "Well-being for Being Well" were activated.

For its part, the CGT union asserts that the protocol for preventing violence against workers is ineffective and that these "serious situations of violence" should be handled by the Department of Education's legal department.