CANAE responds to government cuts in education
During the last months, most of the Spanish regional governments have been intensifying their budget cuts in education. They are decreasing the quantity of teachers, removing grants for text books and materials, etc. arriving to the point where students took actions against these cuts. OBESSU’s Spanish member organisation, la Confederación Estatal de Asociaciones de Estudiantes (CANAE), also responded by claiming the right to protest and asks for dialogue.
The cuts are far-reaching. For example, some weeks ago, there were some high schools in Valencia that arrived to the point of turning off the heating because of the lack of money. As a consequence of the severe cuts, students from the High School Lluis Vives run some small protests, like blocking the street for some time each day. One day, the police took aggressive actions against this protest and arrested students were protesting. This caused more indignation and the next day there was a massive protest in Valencia with thousands of students against the police aggressions. In this protest, the police arrested more students, among them the President of FAAVEM, the valencian student federation which is part of CANAE. During the next days, the protests grew up and also the police violence increased.
CANAE has taken part in this issue by condemning all kinds of violence. But CANAE also claims for the respect of the right to protest peacefully and asks for dialogue. CANAE published a couple of press releases with their position on this and CANAE representatives participated in a press conference with other representatives of the school community (a parents’ confederation, another student union, a schools principals’ organisation…) in which they deffended this position. Moreover, they called, with other organisations, for a peaceful and silent 5-minute stop in all schools in Spain as a sign of rejection of the violence against the protests.
Written by Jaime Sevilla Lorenzo, International Officer of CANAE
