At Can Alcover in Palma, an exhibition is being held that celebrates the struggle of Balearics teachers, and in particular the Assemblea de Docents teachers' organisation, against the ramifications of trilingual teaching (TIL). The exhibition was in fact launched in Barcelona to commemorate the first anniversary of the massive anti-TIL demonstration in Palma at the end of September 2013. It has been brought over to Mallorca and it will be on display until 14 February. It shows, among other things, photos of the demo and charts the chronology of the struggle from the time that TIL was approved, through the sackings of two education ministers and the three-week strike, to the various "denuncias", the latest of them being against Isabel Cerdà, the director-general for planning, innovation and professional training at the education ministry, for a supposed abuse of office in respect of the "massive approval of TIL projects".
This has not been a struggle against TIL per se. It has been a struggle against the perceived unfairness and unjustness of a teaching regime that has sought to diminish the influence of Catalan. One neglects the past at one's peril, but notwithstanding the discriminations of the past and the potential for them to repeat themselves, styling this all as a struggle of some form of social injustice neglects what has been and remains a political confrontation. Both sides, teachers and government, have denied that they have had political motives, but they most definitely have: the struggle has been a clash between entrenched ideologies with language at their core. The unjustness and unfairness have been those that have plunged the education system into chaos; the victims are those on the receiving end of this system, the schoolchildren and many parents who have not been persuaded by the narrative of the teachers' struggle.
Who pulled the first political trigger in all this mess is now pretty much irrelevant. The chronology of the struggle is thus also now irrelevant. What should be relevant and what should be the struggle is to come to an accord to create a rich, varied, contemporary public education system for a region of Spain which, linguistic arguments aside, has obstinately underperformed for way too long. Instead, and despite the protestations of government and teachers which insist that they have made paramount the needs of schoolchildren, the education system has been hung out to dry by a conflict which could have been predicted and one in which both sides have been eager participants. A plague on both their houses.
It suits the Assemblea to remind everyone of the struggle because of the next stage in its process. If, as they have threatened, the teachers go ahead with strikes in the lead-up to the regional election, these might easily backfire because of the weariness of parents. The teachers will believe otherwise: that strikes will be an additional force in bringing down the Partido Popular in May.
Strikes or no strikes, this may well happen in any event, and already there are clear indications as to what will transpire if there is a change of government. Francina Armengol of PSOE went on record months ago in saying that she would scrap TIL. On Saturday, at a conference in Palma, she spoke of taking "ambitious measures" in creating a quality public education system through a "social and political pact" that will restore peace to the classrooms. What such a pact might be and what such measures might also be, we are yet to find out, but it was perhaps no coincidence that Armengol should be speaking about such a pact when one has already been formed. Various bodies, such as the Assemblea and the Balearics parents association, have come together in drawing up what they would see forming a new education law, one to be introduced by an alternative government to the PP. While vague about but not dismissive of third language teaching, there would be a return to giving Catalan priority; a minimum 50% of teaching hours in Catalan without specifying what might be the maximum.
Were this to come to pass, then the struggle would be over, but for how long? The four years it would take for the electorate to decide that it wants to bring the PP back into government? And then where would be? Back no doubt to the same arguments, the same conflict and the same struggle. Or maybe not. If there's one thing that many in the PP have discovered, it is that they sense some unjustness and unfairness in the current government's policies.
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