"Very happy. “It is a first giant step that makes children's rights prevail.” This is the initial assessment of Eduard Juvert, spokesperson for the residents of Caneto (Huesca), of the decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Aragon (TSJA) to order the reopening of the town's school, where until the beginning of November 21 children from this small town.
The court understands that the closure order decreed then by the Ministry of Education goes against “the interest of minors.” To do this, it takes into account the location of the center in a highly depopulated area of the Pyrenees, the high number of minors cared for and the fact that it has already been in operation for five years, and orders its reopening, which will take effect next Tuesday (the Monday is a holiday)
As this newspaper already reported in a report published last month, Caneto is a small town in the pre-Pyrenees of Huesca that, after being completely abandoned in the sixties, began a repopulation process that currently has 55 inhabitants, almost half of them minors.
To meet their educational needs, they set up a small rural school (O Chinebro) in 2019. Although the procedures began then, the center was never fully legalized, which did not prevent it from functioning all these years with public aid and teachers hired by the administration itself.
But at the beginning of November, the Education Department of the new Aragonese Government (PP-Vox) surprisingly decreed the closure of the classroom and proposed as the only alternative the daily transfer of students by bus to the CEIP La Fueva in the neighboring town of Tierrantona. The affected families flatly refused, arguing that the journey, about 50 minutes by bus on a road in poor condition, put their children at risk. Disregarding the authorities, since then they have organized themselves with the help of volunteers to continue teaching classes in the town.
Furthermore, on January 9, they filed a contentious administrative appeal before the TSJA to appeal the closure order and request precautionary measures as a partial solution to the situation, which have been approved today.
In its order, the TSJA maintains that the Administration “cannot go against its own actions” and maintain that the school “does not exist” when the Department of Education “has been providing at least two teachers for five years, one for kindergarten and the other of primary school, each course.” In addition, it gives the Aragonese Government 15 days to detail the defects that the school presents and motivated its closure in terms of structural, fire and health safety.
Since Caneto, families have never denied that there are things to improve. Juvert cites the issue of heating in classrooms, which is currently solved with wood stoves and “would be solved by installing a boiler”; the insulation of the building; or the category of land, which is in the process of being classified as urban. “If they can be corrected, which they can, we understand that there will be no problems,” he adds.
After hearing the news, the Government of Aragon announced that it will immediately “accept” the resolution, return the teaching service to the classroom next week and notify the defects of the facilities in a timely manner. “Taking into account that the TSJA itself determines that, if the defects revealed with a risk to security are not corrected, the agreed precautionary measure could be lifted,” they explained in a note.
For its part, the regional PSOE has asked for the resignation of the Minister of Education, Claudia Pérez, because the ruling "evidence that she has lied, that she is not qualified and that she has used Caneto as a weapon against the previous government." From the popular ranks they responded that the socialists “cannot give lessons about anything,” since they are the ones who created a problem that they have had to solve. “They use an administrative and child safety problem to say that the PP attacks rural schools, and that is absolutely false,” they said.
Meanwhile, in Caneto they prefer to stay away from political issues and are already preparing for their children to return to the classrooms and resume the normality they lost several weeks ago. “It has been a hard and exhausting fight, but this resolution gives us a little respite. Now it's time to continue fighting to achieve definitive solutions,” Juvert says by phone.
