"A teacher took a student and threw him out the window"

PalmaIf one thing marked me from my school years it was that there were very violent teachers. I remember one who beat a child until he was devastated. Another day, he threw one out of the window. Today it would be unthinkable. Back then, nothing happened. There were also humiliations. A classmate with a facial deformity, who spoke with difficulty, was ridiculed by the director in front of the whole class. He asked him if he had finished selling coupons. No one laughed. The silence was more eloquent than any laughter.

My schooling began very early, at only two years old, with the nuns at Vivero, in Palma. I have few clear memories, but a clear sensation: inside there was discipline and also humiliation. If a child misbehaved, they put a black band on him so that everyone could see him. It was a public punishment, a mark. Years later, passing by the convent, I still saw the crest of José Antonio above the door. As if time had not completely passed.

In our home, life also took a turn soon. At six years old I lost my father, although his illness had already conditioned us before. That's why I had my communion at five years old, advanced, to coincide with my brother. At that age I already knew the catechism by heart. It was almost everything I had learned in those first years.

Afterwards I went to the Avante school, where I stayed until the eighth grade of EGB. There I lived a contradictory period. On the one hand, I have good memories: I played basketball, we had a competitive team and they even took us to Mataró. Those moments, with my classmates, were a breath of fresh air. I also remember the day Franco died: they gave us three days off and we experienced it almost like a party, without fully understanding what it meant.

But school was also a tough place. Before '75 we used to sing the Cara al sol. Then that started to disappear, but Francoism continued to be present in many things. Classes were in Spanish, even though we spoke Catalan in the playground. And violence was normal. If you were going to get slapped, you got slapped.

I lived it firsthand: one day, in class, I was sitting with a friend and we were making comments looking at a girl's legs. The teacher caught us. He made me stand up, turned my face, and started slapping me one after another. He left my face swollen, red. Then, kneeling as punishment. Nobody questioned it.

New look

However, in the midst of that atmosphere, there was also light. When I was about ten years old, a teacher arrived who deeply impacted me. He opened my eyes. At my home, the regime was defended, but he showed me another way of seeing the world. Years later, he even came to our house to convince my family that I could continue studying. They accepted it... halfway. They told me yes, but that I had to work at the same time. At 15 years old, I was already working.

The hardest memory I keep from an excursion to La Victòria. There were four of us students and a teacher we trusted. We slept in a tent, cramped. In the middle of the night I woke up. I felt his warm hand on me and his breath very close. My body reacted on its own: I jumped over my classmates and moved away. I didn't say anything. Over the years I have understood: he was a sexual predator. And, even so, he continued teaching for a long time.

'My School Years' is a series from ARA Balears that reconstructs what education in Mallorca was like decade by decade through first-person testimonies.