The services of Les Corts have proceeded to evict a group of teachers who were following this Thursday's control session from the public gallery of the hemicycle, after they began to throw banknotes with the faces of the 'president' of the Generalitat, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, and the Minister of Education, Carmen Ortí, and to chant slogans as a gesture of rejection of the Consell's stance on the teachers' demands in the indefinite strike that began last week.
At the same time, the deputies of PSPV and Compromís have risen from their seats and have chanted on several occasions the cry of "Minister, resignation," a slogan they had already repeated at different moments of the plenary session. The first vice-president of Les Corts, Alfredo Castelló, who directed the session in the absence of Llanos Massó, called several parliamentarians from both formations to order and snapped at them: "You have already done the 'performance' and the photos, sit down, 15 seconds is enough."
During the question turn of the Compromís spokesperson, Joan Baldoví, the deputy of this coalition Gerard Fullana has stated that the Valencia Court "has just reopened the case against a subsidized school for very serious sexual abuse of 11 boys between 7 and 11 years old" and has questioned the 'president' of the Generalitat, Juanfran Pérez Llorca: "Do you know which school it is? One of the Opus --Dei-- schools that only accepts boys and that your government has just illegally watered with 16 million euros. Do you know who was the inspector of that educational center? Your minister. Do you know who has renewed the agreement against the law? Your minister."
Fullana has also accused the head of the Consell of "doing politics" when, among other issues, "he orders a VIP spot for his partner, when he cuts 123 million euros to build schools, when he privatizes vocational training, when he mistreats educators or when he orders a campaign to foster hatred towards teachers," and he has asked Llorca "what more this minister has to do for him to throw her out." At that moment, the PSPV and Compromís groups have again shouted "Minister, resignation," in reference to Ortí.
In her response, the Minister of Education indicated that the facts referred to by Fullana are "tremendously chilling" and assured that, in the face of "actions of this caliber," the Consell "can do nothing more than condemn them." She stressed that "it is an ongoing case and, as it must be, this Consell has absolute confidence in justice. Therefore, it will respect and support all decisions it dictates."
Ortí added that "it is true that we have had cases of corruption in different areas of the State, but the Judiciary has all the confidence it deserves from us, regardless of whether the investigated person is the president's brother or wife; what corresponds is to judge the accused for the conduct being investigated and not to cast doubt on those who have the function of doing it well."
Growing tension in the plenary session
At the end of this speech, a group of teachers who were following the debate from the stands began to shout slogans such as "For public and quality education," which were echoed by the deputies of the PSPV and Compromís, standing up, with new shouts of "Minister, resign." Some teachers showed vests with slogans such as "Teacher working in precarious conditions" and threw banknotes with the faces of Juanfran Pérez Llorca and Carmen Ortí again. Faced with this situation, Alfredo Castelló ordered the chamber's services to expel them and called for silence in the hemicycle.
The scene was repeated around 1:30 p.m., at the conclusion of another speech by the head of Education in response to a question from Fullana (Compromís) about the allocation of economic funds to all educational stages. On this occasion, a group of six teachers who remained in the stands began to chant "Negociació en l'educació" (negotiation in education), which again led Castelló to order their eviction.
Clash between Castelló and Fullana over the strike
After the teachers left, and once order was restored, the first vice-president stated: "After this disruption of the plenary session, we continue." Immediately afterwards, Gerard Fullana went up to the podium for his second turn and, when he began to refer to the educational conflict, Castelló asked him to stop "disrupting" the proceedings and to stick to the issue of financing educational stages, reproaching him: "You have been talking about the strike for two minutes."
The Compromís deputy protested the indications of the president of the session, considering that he was marking the content of his speech, but Castelló cut off the discussion sharply: "You do not have a debate with me," he replied.
Both in Fullana's question and in a subsequent interpellation by the PSPV parliamentarian José Luis Lorenz, both have demanded that the minister convene the unions "tomorrow" and "pick up the phone" to resume the negotiation of the teachers' strike.
In her replies, Ortí defended that she will hold "all the necessary Sectoral Table meetings" to "benefit the students before anyone else," recalling that there are 12 days left until the EBAU. She also pointed out that the TSJCV endorsed the minimum services and denied having set "vetoes, red lines, or excuses" in the conversations held so far.
Regarding the letter sent to families after the strike was called, she insisted that she considers that she did "what she had to do, inform the families" with "truthful information through the corresponding channel," the Itaca system, to respond to the messages of "uncertainty, stress, and anguish" that, she said, were coming from students and parents.
Accusations of inciting hatred and controversy over figures
At another point in the control session, after the question from the PSPV spokesperson, José Muñoz, to the president of the Consell, the minister Carmen Ortí accused the socialist deputy José Luis Lorenz of "inciting hatred" for sharing on his Instagram profile a publication —which she showed in the plenary session— in which a guillotine was seen in front of the Ministry of Education.
"I ask you a question: If I meet you on the street, can I go in peace?" Ortí asked Lorenz, while maintaining that a teacher "cannot be publishing that" on their social networks because, in her opinion, it "clearly incites violence" against her.
Previously, the socialist spokesperson José Muñoz had reproached Llorca for claiming that "there is not a penny" for public education while "he gives 72 million euros to Opus Dei" and, in full negotiation with the unions, "made a credit modification to give six million euros to the subsidized schools."
Faced with these criticisms, sources from the Ministry of Education have clarified to Europa Press, to "clarify the figures", that the 6.2 million euros mentioned by Muñoz, intended for the provision of 350 robotics equipment to centers supported by public funds, including subsidized ones, "depend on a program (Escuela 4.0) that belongs to the Ministry of Education".
The same sources have added that "a previous resolution was issued for public schools for the same concept for an amount of almost 15 million euros" and have underlined that "other autonomous communities such as Catalonia have managed the funds in the same way".