22 May 2012
As I mentioned last week, teachers in Alicante are striking for 6 days this month in order to protest cuts being made in education. Today marked the 3rd day of said striking and it has been by far the most successful. When I arrived at school today, it was virtually deserted. The only people who were there were the teachers that had to be there to offer minimal services for the students who came to school. Neither of my host teachers came today so I used the time to finish up some projects that I'd put off.
For the first time, educators from all levels (from preschool to university) from nearly every Comunidad (Spain is divided into 17 comunidades) banded together to protest cuts being made in education.
Various forms of protest have taken place all over the country.
University and high school students in various communities staged sit-ins on their campuses. They brought sleeping bags with them and camped out overnight. In Catalunya, students were able to convince Ferrocarrils to not allow any trains to stop at the University of Barcelona until 11 AM. Of course, there were also many large protests in bigger cities such as Madrid (80,000 people), Barcelona (150,000 people), and Valencia. Alicante also held a protest against cuts being made in education.
The teaching unions estimate that an average of approximately 80% of teachers participated in today's protest. In Alicante, it's estimated that 60% of educators (55% in primary schools, 65% in secondary schools, and 50% at the university) and 80% of students are striking.
For the most part, the protests have been peaceful. However, there have been students and educators that have been detained.
It's estimated that around 7.5 million students were effected by the strike--with 6 million of those students being primary or secondary students.
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