The classroom is narrow and half a dozen students are divided into two rows of desks in front of the blackboard. Behind him, a window overlooks a soccer field and on the wall there is a political map of Spain. One of the students reads aloud an elementary math problem with difficulty and the teacher walks around helping those who get stuck with calculations. Suddenly, a disruptive element. The public address system rings calling several inmates to appear at the entrance. We are not in a school, we are in the Alcalá women’s prison, officially: The Madrid I penitentiary center.
“Some of them didn’t even know how to write their names, but the progression from last year to this year is exponential,” declares the woman in charge of the class, Patricia RodrÃguez, a 40-year-old teacher who has been teaching classes at the school for two years. prison. “I am happy, I am doing a job with them, but they are contributing a lot to me, because they also teach you. Many of them open up and tell you, there are lovely people and that their circumstances have led them to be here, that, perhaps, I could be here perfectly if I had had your situation.
RodrÃguez may be the teacher, but the soul of the class is Lucila Romero, a 53-year-old gypsy woman, originally from Extremadura, but a lifelong resident of the Madrid neighborhood of Moratalaz. She is sitting in the front row and is the spokesperson for the group. “At first it was a little difficult for me because I said, My God, at my age, but I saw that the lady also had a lot of patience with everyone and we did our best and did it a little more,” says Romero. , before the gestures of approval from her companions.
Many of these students find themselves with their first opportunity to study throughout your life without pressure from your family and their husbands. “When I told him that I had learned to subtract, the first word my husband said to me was: ‘I can’t believe it, Lucila.’ Because he always said: ‘LucÃa, you don’t know.’ And I said: ‘But shut up.’ , that’s what fingers are for.’ The fact is that when he came I said: ‘Do you want to believe it? Give me a pen’ so he can see me do a subtraction.”
A highly demanded position
Education in prisons, as well as outside, is the responsibility of the autonomous communities where they are located. In the Madrid’s community There are currently seven penitentiary centers with a prison population of almost 7,000 people in 2022, according to the latest data published by the Ministry of the Interior. 1,850 of these prisoners receive classes at one of the levels taught in prisons by teachers from the public education system following the same program as the Adult Education Centers (CEPA), where they can continue training once they are released.
Through these studies, they can obtain the Compulsory Secondary Education title, initial education, Spanish for foreigners and Basic Grade Vocational Training (FP) cycles to achieve the Secondary School title.
“These teaching positions are in high demand and you have to have a lot of qualifications,” declares Gema López, a primary school teacher and, for two years, director of the CEPA of the Alcalá women’s prison, where There are currently 257 registered dams of the little more than 400 that exist internal in the center. “The level is varied, there is no specific type, it is noticeable when they bring cultural background from outside that they start in first or second year, but they rise like foam, but there are some who have not touched books and it is a little more difficult for them, who tell you: ‘Sir, my mother gave birth to me on the street and that’s where I stayed. Here you realize how lucky many of us are.'”
The CEPAs provide two types of education both in prisons and outside of them. On the one hand, the so-called regulated education consists of six courses that range from the most basic literacy classes to what would be equivalent to the third and fourth year of ESO in the most advanced one. Inmate students have the possibility of continuing their studies from then on remotely, through the National Spanish Distance University (UNED). On the other hand, also in person, inmates have different non-regulated alternatives such as languages, computer science or preparation courses for the university entrance test.
And what about student-teacher conflicts? López herself admits that she entered the center with the mind loaded with negative stereotypes about the prison population which, shortly after, were completely dismantled. “I have really had problems outside with disruptive behaviors and behaviors, many with adolescents, with ESO, and with not so adolescents in primary school. Here? Not here,” declares the director of CEPA.
Study to feel free
As soon as they enter the women’s prison, the prison director, Jesús Moreno, tells visitors what they will find inside: “This is not the same as that,” he declares, pointing behind him to the twin prison, Madrid. II, better known as the Alcalá-Meco prison, which houses a thousand male prisoners. The women’s prison was Initially designed as a rehabilitation center for drug-dependent prisoners in the 80s and its interior appearance is far from the stereotypes of what a prison building is.
The pavilions are low and surrounded by gardens. The faces here change a lot, many prey are only in the center for a while and the population rotates continuously. This means that the majority of people who enroll in CEPA classes do not finish the course there. “It is fundamentally because they leave the center. Imagine that a preventive inmate enters now because the police arrest her for the alleged commission of a crime, she enters prison and the girl says: ‘Ah, well, I’m going to go to school.’ “explains director Moreno. “She starts going to school and, within two months, the judge releases her provisionally because she pays the bail and she leaves. So, it is not a dropout from school, it is that she leaves free” .
The female prisoner population in Spain – excluding Catalonia and the Basque Country, which have transferred prison powers – is about 3,400 people, just 7% of the total number of prisoners, and only 13 are in first degree, the strictest. The majority – 43% – are serving sentences for crimes against property, mainly theft, robbery and extortion, followed by crimes against public health – 25% -, mostly linked to drug trafficking. “The majority of them do not have a criminal profile, but are foreigners who have been dragged into acting as mules and are not conflictive,” declares the director of the prison, who also emphasizes that enrolling for taking classes is taken into account when obtaining prison benefitss as sentence reductions.
On one side of the central patio is the library. Two students are waiting inside there who have decided to take the step of enrolling in the CEPA in their first months of confinement at the center. Their life experiences are very different, but they have both ended up in the same place and share the same paradoxical reflection: studying in prison is making them freer.
Sonia Garrido is 52 years old and has been in Madrid I for nine months. In her day she had reached the 2nd year of BUP – the equivalent of the 4th year of the current ESO – before leaving the institute to work. After her, throughout her life, she took several vocational training courses. She is one of the profiles with greater preparation that enroll in the CEPA from prison, in fact, his goal after passing the last course is to continue studying Psychology at UNED.
“I plan to continue. Besides, here, here they have encouraged me a lot and I am very happy. Well, he got me some grades… I swear, I haven’t gotten them even when I was young. I work a lot,” declares Garrido, who He only sees positive aspects in the decision to have resumed studies in prison. “They are taking away my sentence with this, because my head, at least, is free.”
Sitting next to him, Débora Tejero is younger, 39 years old, and has been in prison for 10 months. “Honestly, I didn’t do anything outside, I didn’t work, I sold marijuana and, well, I read a lot, I’ve always liked to learn, but I was really isolated in my world,” declares this Madrid native whose life story is loaded with child abuse, sexist violence and social isolation. “I had studied, but I didn’t really study, I went to class, but I didn’t study, the truth is. Now, the truth is that here I have been given a very good opportunity and I feel freer than outside, that is, I am a prisoner, But I’m free right now, being here.”
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