Teachers redouble their pulse against the Portuguese government with a historic demonstration in Lisbon

The last time teachers filled the Terreiro do Paço in Lisbon was in 2008. Some 100,000 teachers rallied there against the new career statute designed by Minister Maria da Lurdes Rodrigues.

15 years later they have again mobilized massively (150,000 people, according to the organizers).

As then, they do so in the face of a socialist government with an absolute majority, which is facing a social conflict that had disappeared from the Portuguese streets after the end of the

(European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and European Commission) and the departure of the Government of the conservative Pedro Passos Coelho in 2015. The message that was repeated the most this Saturday on the posters only has one word: “Respect”.

Arriving from all over the country, the teachers flooded for several hours the most symbolic corridor of the capital, which connects the Marqués de Pombal square with the Terreiro do Paço, at the foot of the Tagus, with songs, batucadas and posters to express their demands .

From the concrete ones, such as the recognition of all the time worked or the end of precariousness, to the abstract ones, such as the recognition of the profession.

“These are years of humiliation and trampling that we do not deserve.

Teachers are the pillars of society and if there are no pillars, everything falls to the ground”, says Patrícia Montalvão, who has become a regular teacher this course after 13 years of contracts, which have taken her home with her for everything. the country and barely a net salary of 1,100 euros per month.

The march has shown that teachers are more united than their unions.

Teachers like Bernardino Andrade, who is a professor of Mathematics in Maia, has traveled the 340 kilometers that separate him from Lisbon every time an important demonstration has been called, whether it was from STOP, the new union that has revolutionized the protests, or from the traditional National Federation of Teachers, which organized the demonstration this Saturday.

Andrade wears a STOP shirt, has a megaphone through which

and an ironic banner where he suspends the Minister of Education, João Costa, for his calculation of the time worked by permanent teachers.

“There is a union war and we want them to be united,” he observes.

The leader of STOP, André Pestana, also joined the march this Saturday, who does not see the end of the conflict close.

"It's a matter of the government deciding that its priority is the public school and allocating the money it needs," he demanded.

Professor Bernardino Andrade, at the Lisbon demonstration on Saturday, February 11, 2023.Tereixa Constenla

Since December Bernardino Andrade has gone on strike for seven days over a long list of demands: the disappearance of an evaluation system to move up the career ladder that he considers unfair because it sets maximum quotas or the computation of all the time worked.

"On average, teachers take 16 and a half years to get a permanent position in a school," he complains.

Andrade also reflects on the future of teaching: “75% of teachers are over 50 years old, they will retire in 15 years and there will be no young teachers to replace them because nobody wants to be a teacher.

We need to revalue this profession”.

Some who will be the generational replacement also attended the protest, such as about twenty students from the Lisbon Higher Education School.

"I have come to fight for my future rights and have an active voice like that of the citizens that I am going to educate in the future," said Ana Filipa Costa, 21, and a student of the Preschool Education Master's Program.

"Students are afraid of what awaits us, we go to work with a very negative mentality," she adds.

Professor Ivone Silva, on the right, and three colleagues from Fafe, at the Lisbon teachers' demonstration on Saturday, February 11, 2023.Tereixa Constenla

Nine buses of teachers arrived from Fafe, almost 400 kilometers from Lisbon, including Ivone Silva, who has been a teacher for 25 years.

“We feel that there is a great devaluation of our work both from the government and from society,” he says.

Fernando Oliveira and Manuela Oliveira, a couple of teachers from Monçao, on the border with Galicia, represent the two faces of the protest.

He is a permanent Physical Education teacher, while she has been a contracted Physics and Chemistry teacher for 20 years.

She earns the same since she started, around 1,000 euros.

“Every year I go to a different school, last year I did 220 kilometers every day to work.

We want to put an end to precariousness and for the Government to explain to us why in 20 years I have not gotten a place and now this course is going to generate more than 10,000 ″, she criticizes.

The situation of contracted Portuguese teachers has caused alarm even in the European Commission, which has sanction proceedings underway against Portugal on the grounds that it discriminates against them compared to those with a fixed position in aspects such as salaries or seniority.

"What is going to be solved in the case of those hired is not by the will of the Government, but because it is imposed by Brussels," laments Manuela Oliveira.

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