Damià Pons was the 'blind' professor, but he made you think

PalmWhen I started school, I was three years old and the youngest in the class, because we are from November. The first memories are of the Franciscan nuns of Bunyola. I especially remember Sister Antònia: a small, chubby woman who never raised her voice. I have no memory of punishments or bad words. I went to school happy, without fear.

Then I moved to the national public school, which we knew as 'the pine school'. I did all of EGB there. It was a completely traditional school, very based on memorization. Repeating, studying, and repeating again. Even so, there were teachers who tried to do different things. I especially remember when we did theater: those moments broke the routine and made us feel that school could be something else.

I also remember Cecilia Martí, the sixth-grade tutor. She had a school choir and put enormous enthusiasm into it. We had rehearsals in the afternoons. Honestly, I didn't like it much, but over the years I have understood the value of that effort, that way of building community.

The school was a fairly orderly place. The schedule was from 9 to 12 p.m. and from 3 to 5 p.m. There were about thirty students, boys and girls together from the beginning. There was a lot of respect for the teachers. A respect that was not questioned. What the teacher said was gospel, and at home, if there was a problem, the parents sided with him. I never saw physical violence, but I did see a certain authoritarian tone, especially from sixth grade onwards. Dry comments, orders given in a bad way. Nothing that could be discussed. It was also a school without resources for diversity. If a student had difficulties, they simply failed. No one considered what was behind that zero.

In terms of language, we lived in a kind of contradiction. At Los Pins, classes were in Spanish, the books too, but we, in the playground and among ourselves, spoke in Mallorcan. It was the natural language. With the nuns, on the other hand, Catalan was spoken.

From School to High School

The big change came with high school, at Joan Maria Thomàs. I came from a small, single-track environment, where everyone knew each other, and suddenly I found myself in a huge school, with five or six groups per year. There, you were no longer “Miquel”, you were just one more. The relationship with the teachers was much colder. They didn't know who you were, or where you came from. At the previous school, they had known you since you were little, there was a more personal connection. In high school, that was lost. Nevertheless, I had no problems adapting or making new friends.

It was also in high school where I began to truly become aware of the language. Until then, Catalan was there, but in a diffuse way. From sixth grade onwards, we had taken that strange subject called "Lengua de las Baleares", with a book and very basic content. But all of that was quite superficial. In high school, on the other hand, I had teachers who made a difference. One of them was Damià Pons, whom we used to call “the blind professor”, because he was very engaging. With him, Catalan stopped being something secondary. There was demand, rigor. He made you think. I also remember na Joana Maria Romaguera, along the same lines. With those two, the language gained weight and meaning. But not everyone experienced it the same way. There were classmates —even Catalan speakers— who showed rejection. They didn't understand why they had to study it. It was a strange resistance, as if Catalan were an external obligation.

Looking back, my educational experience is a mix of order, routine, and small moments that changed everything. Teachers who passed by without leaving a trace and others who marked me forever. And, above all, the feeling that, despite everything, there was something within that school that made me want to stay. Because, in the end, if I decided to become a teacher, it's because at some point I saw that it could be much more than memorizing and staying silent.

'Els meus anys d’escola' is a series by ARA Balears that reconstructs what education in Mallorca was like decade by decade through first-person testimonies.*Text based on the interviewee's testimony