Schools in Montsià and Baix Ebre will end classes at noon due to rain.

BarcelonaRain has complicated the first day of school in around 100 schools and secondary schools in the Baix Ebre and Montsià regions. Although classes began normally, the Department of Education announced a few minutes ago that school activities will end at 2:00 p.m. "due to the dangerous weather conditions" in these areas. Civil Protection will send an ES-ALERT alert to mobile phones in Montsià and Baix Ebre this afternoon due to the risk of torrential rain. Travel and outdoor activities are recommended to be avoided.

Educació has also clarified that, although classes are suspended, schools will remain open until all students have left. Furthermore, school transport will be moved up to accommodate this time change.

In fact, in the rest of the country, the threat of rain and the muggy weather have also been the main drivers of the return to school. Half an hour before the start of classes, the sidewalk across from the Xirinacs School in Barcelona—which has the peculiarity of being located inside the former Model prison—was packed. "Are you keeping him or should I take him?" a woman, holding an umbrella, asked her son, who is 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 him inside the school either."

What seemed to be non-existent in the minutes before returning 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. Selfies And 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

Meanwhile, USTEC, the largest union in the education sector, has once again threatened "a new round of protests" 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.