"After the 'National Spirit' class, Borja Moll would tell us: 'Open the windows, it smells bad'"

PalmI was born in 1948 on the Iberian Peninsula, but we came here when I was little because my parents were from Mallorca. first memories of school My memories are from Palma, from a public school that used to be in Pere Garau Square. From that time, I especially remember Mrs. Micaela, who was my teacher when I was very young. From the age of six, I had several teachers. First Rafael, then Ricardo, and later Pedro, who was Mrs. Micaela's husband. Pedro taught us so much. He knew a ton of things and would tell us about topics that, looking back, were almost at a high school level.

I remember when I was eight or nine, we'd play five-on-five battles about the Punic Wars. We knew who Scipio and Hasdrubal were and a lot of other things about that history. Now you talk to a lot of kids about it and they don't know what it is. When I went to secondary school later on, a lot of history was already familiar to us. We spoke Mallorcan perfectly among ourselves. Classes were taught in Spanish, but in the playground or in the classroom, we spoke Mallorcan without any problem. At Pere Garau school, around 1958, there were hardly any outsiders.

Physical assaults

The discipline was harsh. They made us line up, and if we did something wrong, they'd hit us with a ruler on our hand or fingers. Other times, they'd make us kneel with two books on our hands, and if you lowered your hand, they'd hit you with the ruler or their hand. I especially remember an incident before a trip to Lucas. We were queuing to get on the bus, and I got distracted. The teacher slapped me so hard that I went flying forward to the bus door. Rafael hit everyone. Some boys took so much punishment they were like punching bags.

I started at the Institut Ramon Llull when I was not yet ten years old. There I met Pere Carrió and other classmates with whom I still meet and have lunch together today. At that time, we weren't very aware of the ideological component of the education we were receiving, but I do remember some things very clearly. Every day, first thing in the morning, Joan Bonet Colomar, who was the head of the Falange in the Balearic Islands, would come. He would teach us Formation of the National SpiritThey also made us sing the Facing the sunWe even had a book called Luiso, which presented the life of an exemplary child, according to the ideals of Francoism, of course.

However, there were also very different teachers. In second or third year, we had Francesc de Borja Moll, who taught us French. We had him second period, right after the class onNational SpiritHe would enter the classroom and say, "Guys, open the windows, it smells bad in here."

There were also some very cold places at the school. I remember an area without heaters where we did technical drawing. We were shivering, and yet we still had to draw. Imagine the straight lines we drew. The Ramon Llull building, besides being cold, also reflected the times. The first floor and the ground floor were for the boys, and the second floor was for the dolls. They entered through a different door, on Plaça del Tub, and the central staircase was walled off before reaching the top floor so we couldn't mix.

'My school years' It is a series by ARA Baleares that reconstructs what education was like in Mallorca decade by decade through first-person witnesses.

*Text prepared based on the interviewee's testimony