"One day I vomited at school and they forced me to eat it; I haven't tasted jam again"

One of the most unpleasant episodes of my entire schooling still stays with me vividly. One day, in the dining hall, I vomited. And instead of taking care of me, they forced me to eat it. I still remember it with a very strong feeling of disgust. It was strawberry jam, and they made us eat it by the spoonful. I have never tried it again. It was a time when school truly indoctrinated, so much so that they now tell us teachers that we do it.

I still have the moment of writing a date on a piece of paper for the first time etched in my memory: 1975, the year Franco died. I was in my first year of EGB. I didn't know it, but that period would be marked by a strange feeling: growing up between a school that was ending and another that was beginning.

I grew up in Carmel, a working-class neighborhood in Barcelona. I'm the youngest of seven siblings, and my parents decided I wouldn't go to the public school at that time. It had a very bad reputation because it was where indoctrination was most prevalent. That's why I started at Menéndez Pidal, a private school. I only did first and second grade, but I have very vivid memories. I wore a uniform, boys and girls were separated, and there was a picture of Franco in the classroom. It was a very disciplinary school.

After that, my parents took me out of there and I went to a very different school: Paulo Freire. It didn't have a playground, and we went to the park, but the change was enormous. The education was more open, more alive. There was sports – athletics, gymnastics – but above all, a way of doing things that was more participatory, more connected with what was happening around us. Even though all my schooling was in Spanish, here we had a Catalan class. At Paulo Freire, I began to feel that school could be an interesting place, not just a space of obligations.

Later I went to the Mistral Academy, very close to my house. It was a neighborhood school, with many extracurricular activities: football, basketball, ping-pong. They placed great importance on handwriting, on the cleanliness of notebooks, on presenting everything well. But, at the same time, there was a very open way of functioning. We had assemblies, debates, we wrote a lot. There was space for us to express ourselves. We also did theater – I still remember A Midsummer Night's Dream– and the relationship with the teachers was much closer. It was a school designed for the people of the neighborhood, to provide opportunities and to create community.

The big change came when we moved to Mallorca. I came from this more open model –group work, text production, diverse activities— and suddenly I found myself in a convent school, only for girls. It was a strong shock. I felt completely out of place.

Politics in the classroom

There is a scene I haven't forgotten. It was in 1982, shortly after Felipe González's victory. In class, they made us work on the political system. They dictated to us: “Alianza Popular, led by Mr. Manuel Fraga” and “the PSOE, led by Felipe González”. I stood my ground: if one was a ‘mister’, the other had to be too. There was quite a commotion. Nothing was questioned there. Besides, every day we sang the Cara al sol.

I didn't last long in that center. Then I went to CIDE, and there everything changed again. It was a large, open school, surrounded by fields. We used to play among almond trees. The teachers were friendly, approachable. Over time I have understood that not all schools are the same. Some drown you and some open you up. And what stays with you most is not the content, but how they treated you.

'My school years' 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