School strikes are already spreading across Spain: the walkout dates families need to know

Cataluña’s youngest pupils are due to walk into empty classrooms on the very first day of term, and the disruption doesn’t stop there. Madrid’s teachers have called an indefinite strike from October, Andalucía’s begins in November, and nursery staff across the Balearic Islands are due to walk out on October 6.

Class sizes and pay lie behind the biggest walkouts 

Unions behind Cataluña’s strike, including USTEC-STEs, CGT, Intersindical, CNT and COS, timed the stoppage for Tuesday September 8, the first day back, to put maximum pressure on the regional government over overcrowded classrooms, underfunded inclusive education and school buildings still waiting for repairs.

Madrid’s dispute follows a similar pattern but goes further. CCOO and UGT have called an indefinite strike from Wednesday October 14, while the CSIF union holds its own protest outside the regional education ministry on September 16. Teachers there are demanding smaller classes, fewer teaching hours, salary parity with colleagues in other regions, more support staff for pupils with special needs, and classrooms that are properly heated and cooled.

Nationally, Teresa Esperabé, general secretary of CCOO’s teaching federation, said investment needs to reach six per cent of GDP, with more specialist support for pupils who need extra help. Unions are pushing for a maximum of 22 pupils per class in primary school and 25 in secondary, with teaching loads capped at 23 hours a week for primary teachers and 18 for those in secondary. 

Andalucía and the Comunidad Valenciana add two more important dates

In Andalucía, around 30 education organisations have called a one-day general strike for Wednesday November 11, arguing that years of underinvestment have left the region’s public schools falling behind.

In the Comunidad Valenciana, thousands of teachers are expected to join a unified demonstration on September 12 across Alicante, Valencia and Castellón. It follows a bruising spring, when unions voted to back an indefinite strike from May 11 after talks on salaries, class sizes and infrastructure stalled. The autumn mobilisation suggests those grievances were never properly resolved.

Why Alicante’s classrooms feel the strain hardest

Nowhere does that shortfall land harder than in Alicante, which already has the highest proportion of foreign-born residents of any province in Spain, at roughly one in four, according to padrón data. Alicante is also one of just seven Spanish provinces where around a quarter of primary school pupils are foreign nationals, Ministry of Education figures show, alongside Lleida, La Rioja, Castellón, Murcia, Girona and Teruel. Teachers’ unions say language support, specialist staff and other resources for these pupils have not expanded at the same pace as the school population itself. 

None of that means foreign pupils are behind the strain. For a British or international family with children in an Alicante school, it means the language help or extra support their child relies on is more likely to be missing on the very days a strike hits, simply because the system had less room to begin with.

The Balearic Islands’ nursery strike is another separate fight

Parents of under-threes in Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza face their own run of disruption. Nursery staff, known as escoletas, are due to protest outside the Balearic Parliament on September 9, followed by demonstrations across all three islands on September 10. Sit-ins are planned at around 25 nurseries on September 18 and a mass demonstration on September 25, before a general strike across the entire 0-3 network on October 6. 

CCOO, UGT and STEI, the unions behind the action, say childcare workers have suffered a steady loss of purchasing power and want a proper regulatory framework for the sector negotiated with their own representatives. It is not the first 0-3 dispute of the year, either, after a Comunidad Valenciana nursery strike in May left some schools running on minimum services.

More regions could still join before Christmas

El País reported this week that disputes are now brewing in nine regions in total. Beyond the strikes already confirmed, protests are planned in Cantabria on September 5 over job cuts and privatisation fears, and in the Basque Country on September 11 in Bilbao. CSIF has threatened further action in Aragón and Castilla-La Mancha, while unions in Murcia, Asturias, Canarias, Galicia, Navarra, La Rioja, Castilla y León and Extremadura are all running campaigns without a confirmed strike date yet.

For families working out which dates might actually affect their children, Cataluña’s September 8 walkout is the first real test of how disruptive this term will become, and with several more unions yet to set a date, it is unlikely to be the last.