Pupils and teachers shiver in freezing classrooms across Spain to comply with covid measures

Covid protocols require open windows in classrooms across Spain

The situation in Murcia is better than in other areas of the country where temperatures are below zero.

The return to school after the Christmas and New Year holidays has never been a popular event for children in Spain, but as pupils and teachers go back to their classrooms for the first time in 2021 for many of them it is turning out to be a particularly difficult time.

As Covid incidence rates rise across the country the concerns over giving classes remain as valid as at any time since education resumed in September, and teachers in secondary schools in Murcia continue to give classes as best they can with half of the pupils in the classroom and the other half attending online via a computer screen. But on top of that the start of the new term has coincided with some of the coldest weather on record in Spain, and due to classes having to be ventilated as a coronavirus precaution most are consigned to wearing fleeces, bobble hats and even mittens throughout the school day.

In Alhama de Murcia, for example, the open windows allowed uninterrupted views of the snow-capped peaks of Sierra Espuña from many classrooms, but the discomfort was shared by teachers and pupils alike: only during the course of the morning did it emerge that windows could be closed during classes as long as a 10-minute ventilation period was observed every hour!

Even then, worries remained over the expense of keeping heating systems on at full blast until the regional government insisted that this was necessary, delegating the responsibility of ensuring ventilation timetables to each school.

If classrooms were cold in Murcia, though, the situation this week is far more extreme in other parts of the country as night-time temperatures plummet to well below minus 20 degrees in some areas. In Madrid the historic snowfall of last week and the weekend has delayed the return to school until Thursday, by which time the worst of the cold snap is expected to have passed, but in the meantime the national students’ union CANAE has described the situation as “unsustainable”.

CANAE reiterate the fact that heating systems are broken in countless schools across the country and that many school buildings lack any kind of heat insulation: this, they say, added to the wearing of facemasks and partial attendance regulations in place in most centres, is making both teaching and learning unreasonably difficult.

It is one of the stated aims of the national government, CANAE president Andrea G. Henry points out, to provide “quality education”, but with students huddled at their desks wrapped in blankets the conditions this week cannot in truth be said to be compatible with that aim!

Image: CANAE; The state confederation of associations of students calls the situation "unsustainable".