04.04.2014 - 13:02
Many people don’t know about it, and there hasn’t been a lot of media coverage, but at night, in various schools across Valencia, there is a light on. Groups of parents and teachers have decided to close themselves in to demand that the Catalan classrooms that Alberto Fabra’s government wishes to eliminate be maintained in the next school year. In total, it’s forecasted that 150 classrooms will be eliminated, seventy of which use the Catalan language. With respect to the other eighty, they still don’t know the vehicular language of the remaining classrooms on the chopping block. “It’s a brutal attack on public education and in Valencian, the worst that’s happened so far, it’s so big that people don’t even know about it,” said Sílvia Ureña, the spokesperson for plataforma Prou, born just a few weeks ago in Ontinyent, one of the affected municipalities. The group wants to coordinate the actions among the various schools that, until a few days ago, were all working on their own. What was a new movement just recently has now spread through the Valencian territory.
The first school in which parents decided to close themselves in, forty days ago, was Ciutat de Cremona, in Alaquàs. The Councilor wants to eliminate the only kindergarten classroom in Catalan that was left and despite being the most solicited center in the municipality, this classroom is not on the offered list for the 2014-2015 school year. The teachers speak with fear and avoid the cameras. And with good reason, since they have received threats and pressure from the Councilor who has asked which teachers were staying over night in the school and offering support to the parents. The parents, however, grouped in the plataforma TotsSomCremona, are decided that they will not stand down and they will stay closed up in the school until the government changes its mind.
“Our struggle will continue at least until September. There are at least twenty parents who bring their kids to school and then it will be the government who has to do something because if it doesn’t change its mind, those children won’t have a classroom,” explains Miguel Piqueras, from the Plataforma TotsSomCremona.
The case of Ciutat de Cremona, in addition, is special. It’s a center made out of barracks, since seven years ago. The Generalitat had promised a new school to the parents and the municipality and had even opened bids for the construction, but there has been no further progress, and now that the classrooms are being eliminated, it looks like the government’s intention is to gradually close the center.
