In a prison the Onion nanas that Miguel Hernández dedicated to his little son. It was the one on Calle Torrijos in Madrid, but the poet also set foot in the old prison in Huelva. He remained there for just a few days and yet that trace and that of his literary legacy today gives its name to the educational center that houses the La Ribera prison, the Miguel Hernández Gilabert Permanent Education Center.
They attend class in their classrooms persons deprived of liberty but not in training. Students like Manuel, Valentín, Ismael or José Antonio, who agree that thanks to this time of study they clear their minds of bad things, or as the poet said to his child, Your laugh sets me free / It sets me wings / Solitudes take me away / Prison tears me away.
The inmates have a training range that goes from the most basic literacy level to the university through the UNED, passing through Vocational Training. Manuel attends Level 2 of basic training every morning from Monday to Friday, he has one year and eight months of sentence left and he hopes to leave prison with the ESO title under his arm. Manoli, his teacher, says that this father of several children “has an attitude.”
To them, Manuel encourages them to study, “I always tell them that it will be good for them tomorrow and they are doing very well. They tell me daddy, I got an 8, what a joy ”. He assures that his strength is mathematics, but his homework is worse because “I have all day busy with activities and I also do sports.” In June he will have to take the Level 2 exam and if he passes it, he would take the free tests for the achievement of ESO in April of the following year. Cocaine and the consequences of its consumption led him to the place he occupies now, but in the classes “it becomes more enjoyable”, he has also learned to “solve situations that have already presented themselves to me in order to relapse, and I have said no.”
Six hundred students enrolled last year, although the process is always open. At present there are about four hundred because due to the works that are carried out the total prison population is smaller. Also on Level 2 is Ismael, he is from La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz) and awaits his transfer to the Botafuegos prison in Algeciras. He just got a 10 in math and before that, a 9.25 in Social and an 8.5 in language. “I have not been a bad student but I was a young father … and I took the wrong path.”
In February there will be a review of his sentence, which for the most part “I have spent working”, a period in which “I have also taken a great liking for reading.” To this find and especially to the work of Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa He spends his free time, which is left to him by his studies at the hands of “some wonderful teachers.”
Raúl Barba has run the La Ribera prison since 2019 and explains that when a person enters prison “his life stops, that of his loved ones continues and they are not there, it is an emotional shock that creates a void ”.
The objective is to fill it and the result is that “more than 80% of inmates have some kind of activity, the strangest thing is the one who does nothing ”. Everything is voluntary and the director claims that “it is false that they come out worse than they entered, here we are focused on ensuring that this does not happen, that they stop consuming and most of those who leave learn to live without crime.”
“You can see the motivation of the inmates” who attend class, he assures. With his arrival, the Baccalaureate was implanted three years agoThey started with three students and this course there are 24 who are made up of four teachers who come to La Ribera two days a week. Last year the path to PEvAU was even opened, a court moved to the center for university entrance exams.
Most of the inmates of La Ribera are from second degree prison, a category that allows the sentence to be made more flexible once the fourth part has been served. There is the possibility, for example, of obtaining permits for good behavior, something that, as the director points out, “is a very broad concept.” In this sense, good use of time studying can be understood as good behavior that generates a benefit “but it is not automatic, in any case the jail proposes, but for permission a judicial approval is required.”
The benefits are presented in many ways because José Antonio is one tris away from obtaining the ESO degree, of the three areas that he needs to pass, he already has two, he lacks the linguistic one. At the moment “My family has regained confidence in me”says this 34-year-old who wants to continue studying “as far as it goes, if you take it seriously there is no end.” Again, “drugs and bad decisions” also led José Antonio, who has been a carpenter, welder and has even worked in a salon putting false nails. Now he wants to “learn, keep a busy mind and open doors for tomorrow.”
After three years in which “he did not count”, last Valentine finally got the batteries, passed Level 2 of basic training and is now within the plan to get the title of ESO. “I will do everything possible”This student says that he agrees with his children in the subjects they teach in their respective schools and that he is thinking of continuing with a higher stage. “I don’t have time,” he says, he dedicates the afternoons to the gym and he has just started a 6,000-piece puzzle with a colleague, “it’s nice to share that time.”
Total, There are ten teachers that make up the Ceper Miguel Hernández team and in front they have a whole trio of aces composed of Trini (director), Maria (head of studies) and Tania (Secretary). At the beginning, the current director was a member of the former prison teaching staff and at the end of 1987 two teachers from the Junta de Andalucía joined, including Paco Regueira, also the watchword of education in La Ribera.
“Paco and Trini are the soul here,” says the head of studies. Thus, staff from two administrations then formed the adult center of the provincial prison. “But that name was very ugly,” Trini recalls, and then they took Miguel Hernández Gilabert’s. Since 1996 they are in La Ribera –They have just celebrated their 25th anniversary–, there they arrived as four teachers.
Trini has already 34 years of teaching in prison, “I have never worked with children”He points out, “and at no time have I felt fear because I don’t want to know the crimes so as not to condition myself; I am simply their teacher and they are my students ”. Tania adds that “sometimes we are also psychologists”, they live with intensity “this last opportunity they have to get hooked on the system”, says the director.
For this reason, they coincide in feeling for their students “a breath of life”, it is what comforts María, “We bring them something good and new”, This vocational teacher claims to feel “very happy, I do not change it for the children.” In addition, they emphasize with great emphasis “a very good relationship with the penitentiary center, they support us in all our proposals to celebrate the days of women, reading, flamenco, peace … and before the pandemic we had the Parallel film festival during the Ibero-American and the officials are an essential help ”.
The Sociocultural Pavilion of the penitentiary center it houses some of the classrooms, also a library, the assembly hall and various rooms such as a room with computers for students who are studying a university degree at the UNED. It is not normal, but last year an intern obtained a degree in Psychology.
Classes are also taught in the different modules, in La Ribera there are 14. In two of them, the call of respect and the one of the Educational Therapeutic Unit (UTE) lInmates voluntarily accept the fulfillment of a series of commitments among which the school is a fundamental pillar. However, inmates who do not belong to these modules also have the training offer at their disposal.
When Tania arrived at Ceper thirteen years ago she perceived “other smells, other sounds”, everything was different but “I have always felt valued”. These teachers are unveiled by giving their students “airs of freedom” but also assure that “We live very surreal things”.
They have to face incorporations throughout the course, the reactions of their students to harsh family circumstances that catch them behind bars “and serious problems that live here, some student is doing well and suddenly resigns”. In the latter case, coordination with the educator, one per module, is vital to manage the situation. “Other times, you see someone leave with his sentence served and at the time he returns again with an appearance …”, they lament.
“For them we are their help”, and their teachers respond because “we live their progress with great intensity,” he says. Trini, the teacher who decided to always teach imprisoned students.
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