Cuevas del Almanzora families take to the streets as 1,300 pupils cram into a school built for 500

Around 400 parents, teachers and pupils marched through Cuevas del Almanzora on Sunday, October 4, and stopped at an empty 10,000 square metre plot, bought for a new secondary school more than two years ago. Back at the town’s only institute, more than 1,300 students are sharing a building that was put up for 400 to 500.

A school built for 500 now holds more than 1,300

IES El Jaroso (El Jaroso secondary school) was built around 60 years ago for 400 to 500 students, and more than 1,300 are now enrolled, according to the families and teachers who organised Sunday’s march. It’s the only secondary school in a municipality that stretches from the town centre out to the coast at Palomares and Villaricos.

Inside, that means students carrying their backpacks from room to room once optional subjects begin, and some classes having to hunt around for a free room. Repeated extensions have also eaten into the playground, leaving pupils squeezed together at break time.

The pressure is only growing, too. When EWN reported the land purchase in March 2024, El Jaroso had 1,100 students, so at least 200 more have arrived since.

Lessons have already spilled out of the building

The lack of space has pushed part of the school’s vocational training out of the site altogether. Last year, the town hall set up three classrooms and workshops on the ground floor of the Plaza de Abastos (the municipal market) for around 60 FP (vocational training) students studying welding and electrical installation. 

Ana Latorre, president of the school’s parents’ association (AMPA), said the answer so far has been a series of patch-up jobs, with the building “extended here and there”. The Junta de Andalucía said it has spent more than €155,000 on reorganising spaces, adapting classrooms and improving the building. However, families argue that’s nowhere near enough.

Why the land still can’t be used 

The town hall bought the 10,000 square metre plot near Avenida Barcelona in March 2024, and gave initial approval in January to changing the town plan so a school can go there. However, the Junta said nothing can move until that plot is formally zoned for education.

Francisco Góngora, the Junta’s government delegate in Almería, said they “cannot start processing an infrastructure of this kind” on land that doesn’t yet meet the planning requirements, and that once the town hall sorts it out “we can keep taking steps”.

Mayor Antonio Fernández Liria sees it very differently. He said the paperwork is “practically finished” and the land will be ready within two months, and that around 80 per cent of the reports still needed depend on the Junta itself. He also said that “if the Junta had accepted the different land proposals years ago, this problem wouldn’t be where it is now”, and called the regional government’s stance a crude attempt to justify neglecting the town’s education.

The new school is still years away

Even once the plot is signed off, families won’t see a new building any time soon. Latorre said the education delegation told the AMPA that construction would take at least three or four years “if not more”, while the town hall puts the wait until it’s fully up and running at around five years. 

On those timings, the hopeful ‘it’ll be built by the time my youngest gets there’ no longer holds for many families with children in primary school, and a good number could finish secondary school before the new institute opens. “Until that institute is built, where are we going to put the children?” Latorre said.

What families are asking for next

The march on Sunday October 4 was organised by the parents’ associations of all 11 schools in the town, starting at El Jaroso’s gates and ending at the empty plot. Isabel Rojas, president of the AMPA at CEIP Álvarez de Sotomayor primary school, read a manifesto calling for a final push on the new school and an urgent fix for the overcrowding in the meantime.

The parents’ associations will now ask for a meeting with Carmen Jiménez, the Junta’s education delegate in Almería, and the town hall to agree a building timetable and short-term solutions. The mayor has also demanded the Junta publish its plan for the years in between and a binding calendar for its outstanding reports.

The town hall’s planning file is due to go to the regional planning office in the coming weeks, and that’s the step families will be watching, as nothing can be built until the Junta accepts the land as suitable.