Our second meeting

On arrival at the airport of Seville, on 25 April, the temperature is hot and the reception of the guests, by teachers and pupils’ parents of IES S. Virgen de Valme in Dos Hermanas is even warmer. It isthe second meeting of the Comenius project, that I. I. S. Petradefusi Section of Classical High School, is developing with partner schools of the towns Dos Hermanas (Spain), Zacyntos (Greece) and Mouscron (Belgium). It’s some years European Union responsibles for education programs encourage exchanges between schools in different countries. Students working on joint projects, that schools decide individually, freely choosing the topic but always following the rules established by European and national agencies. Families are directly involved in the project, hosting the students of partner schools. Moreover a Comenius project, properly interpreted, arouse the partners: enthusiasm, helpfulness, generosity, familiarity. We got to Dos Hermanas while they were celebrating the Feria in Seville (the two cities seem almost to be one since Dos Hermanas increased in recent decades from a few thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants). The Feria of Seville (Spanish city festivals are so called ) is an important anniversary and attracts thousands of visitors (this year the chronicals report there have been six hundred thousand people). Under the sun that beat strong even though we were in spring, the main activity during the Feria was to taste wine, eat cheese, ham, seasoned olives, then dance flamenco to the rhythm of castanets and beat hands. To feast women of all ages wear the traditional costume, like gitana ones (long skirts flounced with lace bodice and snug), as they wore in Spain until the beginning of the twentieth century. So the teacher Marisa (here we use naming principals and teachers), the project manager for the Spanish school, accompanied the guests to the Feria, offering flowers to colleagues to adorn her hair, as is the tradition in the Feria. Dos Hermanas’ town , very nearly three times bigger than our Avellino, shows the modern face of its neighborhoods (barrios), extremely clean and well-organized. Drivers not only comply with road signs, but aboveall comply with pedestrians, when crossing the road. I think it is not just for concern of the fines that local police can impose to the unruly but for inner sense of respect. At City Hall the delegations, with headmistress of the institute, Ms Carmen, were welcomed in the council chamber by a young woman councillor of education, Mrs Ana Conde, who carefully showed the administrative organization of the city. Twenty seven are the advisers, including the mayor (who in Spanish is called alcalde). I must say regretfully that the administration of a municipality in our province, even of a few thousand inhabitants, takes more than half of those are enough for this Spanish city of over one hundred thousand people. The care for culture in Dos Hermanas is not a rhetorical or parade. They really believe in the importance of culture as social promotion! One example is the municipal library. This, on two floors of a building downtown, is really exceptional, not for the number of volumes owned, but for the organization which is without parallel in our country: downstairs, at street level, the shelves of books in a large reading room, upstairs books and computers. The regulars of our library are usually students, here I saw many elderly people sitting at tables reading books as well as some disabled people did; we all stopped to admire a group of nursery school children guided by moderator, who mimicked the characters of a fable. The opening time to the public is without interruption twenty four hours a day. In Dos Hermanas you can spend the night in the library! At school pupils of four countries presented the institute they came from and the work already done on the dietary habits of teenagers. The students have shown no embarrassment but great enthusiasm speaking at the microphone in front of an audience so diverse in origin and addresses of national studies. After all they are the protagonists.Families have loved to greet us offering Andalusian specialties preparing them the same way they use to do in their homes. We have to give a due recognition to families and teachers who are the prime movers of these experiences; they make the greatest contribution to mutual understanding and construction of a great European nation. Much more important is this quiet but fruitful work if we consider the difficulties that the EU must face daily: prejudice to be overcome need more and more of contacts and exchange of experiences between people of different countries.