A dream realized by the mothers and fathers of the town
In Catalonia, there are more and more towns that have their own schools, but there are still many towns, especially the smaller ones, that do not have educational centers in their territory, which means that families have to look for solutions to take their sons and daughters to school. This was the situation in Saldes (Berguedà), however, 14 years after it was closed due to a lack of students, the families of the town have managed to get the City Council to reopen it: “We had been fighting for this for a long time and finally we succeeded”, says Mònica Brosel, a resident of Saldes. She has an older daughter who depends on taxis to go to school in Vallcebre, a 23-minute drive from Saldes, and this causes them a headache as a family: “The taxi issue was a problem for us, with the roads that are there”, explains the mother, who adds that, despite the fact that they are “grateful to Vallcebre, having the school in the village is a luxury”.
That is why, faced with this reality, many of the fathers and mothers who had to take their children to school outside the municipality. “The families who want to stay here want people to be there, people to come and live here, and above all to keep them here”, comments Violant González, another of the mothers happy with the council’s decision to reopen the school The purpose of this measure by the municipal government is to try to consolidate the population within the town and attract new families to prevent it from becoming depopulated: “If facilities are provided for people with children to come, our children will be with more children, and in the end the what you want is for the children to have friends, a group, the bigger the better”, reasons González. To achieve this, the City Council has decided to expand “the family space” to turn it into an educational center for the next school year.
Promote affordable housing
Saldes believes that reopening the school is not the only way to attract new families to the village and ensure that those who already live there do not leave. That is why, to facilitate the arrival of young people, the City Council has also announced that it will promote affordable housing: “We have started rehabilitating the old flats where the doctor, the teachers, the forester lived, to be able to offer young people or families who buy decent flats to live in,” says the mayor of the municipality, Dolors Jiménez. As he explains, in a matter of weeks two flats will be put up for tender in which priority will be given to families with small children who want to settle in Saldes.