Over the last two to three months, a large number of protest activities have been staged all across Mallorca, in places such as Manacor, Alcúdia, Sa Pobla, Felanitx and Palma. The topic of contention was and still is public education or rather, the planned severe cut-backs in spending in the education sector. In all of Spain, budget cuts in education amount to 3,000,000,000 €; the figure given for the Balearic Islands is 30,000,000 €. Just to put things into perspective, may I remind you that the Spanish government has just bailed out Bankia (Spain’s third largest lending bank) to the tune of 4,000,000,000 €, after the conglomerate bank had already received 4,500,000,000 € from the Spanish government just over a year ago.

Yesterday, there were similar protests all over Palma. In the morning, 20 students occupied the office of the Conseller for the education sector, Rafael Bosch. In the afternoon, a few hundred protesters congregated outside the Conselleria de Educación, Cultura y Universidades and in the early hours of the evening, a few thousand protesters assembled in s’Escorxador (see photos). It is said that 100 schools all over Mallorca participated yesterday in protest demonstrations as well.

Often, political demonstrations in Spain and other Latin countries are accompanied by Caceroladas, where kitchen utensils are loudly banged to create a mind-numbing noise. The demonstration in s’Escorxador included such noisy beatings, as did a protest outside IES Ramon Llull in Palma, two weeks ago (see video below).

The photo (top) was taken in Palma, Mallorca, Spain. The date: May 22nd, 2012. The time was 19:35:54. The photo (centre) was borrowed from the Internet, courtesy of diariodemallorca.es and the photographer, Bartolome Ramon. The video was borrowed from the Internet, courtesy of YouTube and Barrumbo.

Thank you very much, and

muchas gracias.