The threat of rain marks the long-awaited return to school: "Finally, last week was impossible."

BarcelonaFrom shorts and sandals to capes and rain boots. The heat and rain were the main features of the return to school this Monday, to the point that in around 100 schools in Montsià and Baix Ebre, school activities exceptionally ended at 2:00 p.m. due to a meteorological hazard alert. Just minutes before Civil Protection sent an ES-ALERT alert to mobile phones in the area due to the risk of torrential rain, it was announced that school bus service from the affected schools would be brought forward, but that the schools and secondary schools would not close until all students had been picked up.

In fact, in the rest of the country, the threat of rain and the heat also marked the—for some—long-awaited return to the classroom. Half an hour before the start of classes, the sidewalk in front of the Xirinacs School in Barcelona—which has the peculiarity of being located inside the former Model Prison—was packed. "Are you keeping it or should I take it?" a woman holding an umbrella asked her son, who was about 8 years old. While she tried to cool herself with a fan with her other hand, she commented to the mother next to her: "It's true that they won't need it inside school either."

What seemed to be nonexistent in the minutes before the return to school was the mobile phone ban, which will be completely prohibited this year in both preschool and primary school, as well as in secondary school. SelfiesAnd poses to immortalize the first day of school have been repeated for a long time. With grandma, alone, with friends who had just arrived... Of course, with the older ones, despite knowing full well they couldn't bring their devices to school because last year's restrictions were already in place, it was inevitable to repeat the scene where the preteens begged for "just a little more time" on their phones.

Beyond the cell phones and the heat, which will be felt today in classrooms that in many cases are still not air-conditioned, the first day of school was once again a day of reunions. "It's Pau, it's Pau!!" shouted a six-year-old boy, pointing at another boy more than half a block down the street. However, their reunion was cut short by Olivia: despite being several meters from the entrance, the shout from her two best friends from the school gates drowned out any sounds from a street in the Eixample district during rush hour. "It seems like they haven't seen each other in years," laughed their parents, while also half-jokingly celebrating that, finally, their children were returning to their routine. "Finally, last week was an impossible puzzle," acknowledged one of the mothers, stroller in hand.

In the case of downtown Barcelona, ​​the rain held off until the very last moment on the first day of school, and the first drops didn't fall until the vast majority of students—and some families too, since it's the first day they can walk their children to class—were inside the school. Despite it being the first day, as always, there were still some who got their sheets caught. A woman and her oldest son arrived at the door just after nine in the morning, but despite the slight delay, they stopped to ask to have their photo taken. "We always take it on the first day of school, and I know that in ten years we'll be grateful," the woman said with some emotion.

USTEC on the warpath

This morning, the President of the Government, Salvador Illa, inaugurated the school year at the Ponent School in Granollers, where he asserted that the government "has done its homework" to start the year "in the best possible way." Illa argued that they want to dedicate efforts to an education system "of excellence" and acknowledged that "there are many things that remain to be improved, but we do many things very well."

Meanwhile, USTEC, the majority union in the education sector, has once again threatened "a new cycle of mobilizations" if the Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, does not "immediately" open a collective bargaining schedule to improve teachers' working conditions. The announcement comes after Niubó admitted last week that it is "very complicated" to propose the salary increase demanded by the unions.