Strike!

So apparently, my students are on strike. I did not know that was possible, but it seems that students here are also in a sort of union. They're only on strike for two days, this being the first and tomorrow the second. There seem to be no penalties for this, as most of the teachers are against the same law the students are. It's called the "Wert Law" and I've seen posters up all around the town about it. I'm really not sure what's so bad about it (when I asked I got a vague "so many things"). In past years, the teachers have gone on strike a day here or there, but it doesn't do any good just to go on strike for one day, and they just ended up losing pay. So instead they started wearing t-shirts every Thursday decrying the law. It seems like that did not work either.

Today I had only one student in my last class. Apparently there were three at the beginning of the day, having been expressly told they were not allowed to strike. Two of the students got sick (wonder if that means 'skipped class' here, too) and left, so I was down to one. I would rather teach to a class of thirty unexpectedly than a class of one. Poor kid was already upset at not being allowed to strike and then he had to sit through a group presentation about Halloween. We watched the Thriller video, but it just wasn't where he wanted to be. I think, if I understood this whole thing correctly, that tomorrow is the official strike day, so I'll probably be missing a lot of students.

I'll update tomorrow on the strike, and see if I can find some more info on the Wert Laws.

Updates: In my class of older students today, I had only three. They all seemed pretty bummed to be there. I believe there are a bunch of protests around the country today, more notably in cities like Madrid and Barcelona. I believe there is something going on in the Plaza here, but I´ll be in class.

I know that the Wert laws affect education somehow, but I´m still not sure how. I believe it cuts funding for education and sanitation. That´s what I´ve been able to gather, anyway. And these protests have been going on for a long while, but they´re finally being, well, finalized. So this seems like the big push against them. I´m interested to see what a day of protests will do. Not to sound too cynical, but if the government has ignored the people for this long already...

Anyway, and interesting introduction to Spanish culture.