Madrid - Thousands of teachers, parents and schoolchildren marched through Madrid on Tuesday in protest against spending cuts in education, as Spain fights to avoid being dragged into a euro zone debt crisis.
Protests against highly indebted local authorities' cuts in spending on secondary education have also taken place across ten of Spain's 17 autonomous regions, and in Madrid are being accompanied by two days of strike action.
Protesters said the Madrid regional government's decision to increase weekly teaching hours and cut class preparation time would damage the quality of secondary education and mean less work for support teachers.
The euro zone debt crisis has forced up Spain's borrowing costs and the central government is putting huge pressure on the country's autonomous regions - which administer health and education spending - to trim their budget deficits.
“There are other things that can be cut, where money can be saved. Education is an investment in our future,” Miguel Angel Nieto, a teacher at Juan de la Cierva high school in Madrid, told Reuters.
Nieto and dozens of parents and teachers camped out in the school overnight before the start of the strike.
About 80 percent of Madrid's 21 000 secondary school teachers joined the first day of the strike, according to union sources. The Madrid government said the number was nearly half that.
The evening march through Madrid's wide central Arenal Street attracted protesters waving banners with slogans like “Remember London: fewer teachers today means more police tomorrow” and “Education is investment not expenditure”.
The protest was larger than one in Madrid earlier in September, and more demonstrators are expected at a nationwide protest against the cuts planned for October 22.
Teachers' anger has focused on Esperanza Aguirre, president of the Madrid region, home to 6.5 million people, who they say has led a trend of cuts in state-funded education in recent years which is now spreading across the country.
Aguirre has been education minister in previous national governments of the People's Party, which is expected to win general elections in November and end eight years of Socialist rule.
Although the PP has promised not to cut social services spending, it is expected to impose an austere regime. Autonomous regions are already delaying payments to medical suppliers, cutting working hours at hospitals and trimming school spending.
“Just because education is obligatory and free in one stage, that does not mean it has to be free and obligatory all the way through,” Aguirre said on Monday, referring to her proposal to remove partial subsidies for advanced university degrees.
The Madrid regional government is proposing that universities sell assets such as land and buildings, refinance debt and charge for post-graduate programmes, according to administrative documents from a public university in Madrid seen by Reuters.
Spain's central government has targeted an overall public deficit equal to six percent of gross domestic product this year, down from 9.2 percent last year. Most of the savings must come from the autonomous regions since the central administration is on track to meet its deficit target. - Reuters