In what looks very much like a concerted undertaking of ideological sectarianism allied with an attack on Spanish families, the Madrid government wants to exclude private schools from the economic recovery plan following the Covid-19 epidemic.
The Spanish executive has allocated two billion euros to the education sector, an area that is struggling to recover from the long weeks of confinement caused by the Covid-19 epidemic.
If the sum is generous, its distribution risks being a little less so, ideology obliges. In power since January 13, 2020, the government of Pedro Sanchez rests on a heterogeneous alliance between the PSOE socialists and the Podemos Marxists. At least they are united in the same hatred of Catholic Spain.
In this narrow vision of a story that would not begin until after the death of General Franco, the dismantling of private schools—mainly Catholic in the country—appears as a priority. Thus, the bill passed in Congress on July 3, 2020, provides for the outright exclusion of private schools from the list of beneficiaries of the stimulus fund.
Pablo Casado, president of the Popular Party, the main opposition party, accused the PSOE and Podemos of committing “a big mistake that directly violates the freedom of choice of families,” and this by “ideological sectarianism.”
A sectarianism from which the ruling coalition no longer even defends itself: “with our ideology, we respect the elections and the voters who have chosen us,” retorted the spokesperson of the PSOE in the Congress, Maria Luisa Carcedo.
It remains to be seen if, and when, the Spanish episcopate will emerge from the summer torpor which seems to have fallen on it prematurely. The current president of the Conference of Bishops of Spain, Juan Jose Omella, Cardinal Archbishop of Barcelona, in March 2020, commended the “dialogue between the Church and the government,” because, according to the top prelate “it is time to listen to one another.”
For now, the monologue is one-way: “He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil,” wrote Shakespeare (Comedy of Errors, IV, iii).
