First hour of the morning flag raised with the anthem of Spain, and the same at dusk. They dress the uniform of the Spanish Army and are called “cadetes”. They are dismissed in sections assigned to an officer, in military training. They're not soldiers, they're boys and girls ages 7 to 21. They are not in Loiola's barracks, but in a summer camp in the Sierra de Madrid.

"Life here is like a barracks, there is discipline, there is preparation and everyone has to do their work," said the Spanish Army Corporal, Juan González Triguero, to the newspaper El País. Gonzalez is the director of the camp held for 15 days in August. Like him, most monitors are military veterans or former civilian guards, and that seems to be the goal of most young people who have signed up.

Protection mechanism

Álvaro is 21 years old and one of the oldest in the camp. She studies industrial mechatronics and changes her vocation: she wanted to enter the first army, like her grandfather, who was an artillery, but now she prefers to dress in tricorn, like her father and her great-grandfather. Celia is 16 years old, in the camp they all call him "C," and when he told his parents that he wanted to go to that camp, he confesses that they were left in a state of shock, without understanding where that hobby came from. "I suffered from bullying in school and told them I wanted to try to overcome the limits I had been brought up to teach them what I am worth as a person," he added. Celia, who wants to be a military doctor, believes that the camp "serves so that if we want to follow that career we see how we are going to live in the future; and also, it is a family, and that is very important for the people who have suffered what I have suffered."

Discipline

Although he has recognized that there is "a great discipline," he has assured that this is good for some of his colleagues, "because his life was a disaster" and "felt the need for this discipline." It is not the case of Leyre, eight, who complains about the screams the monitors make in the morning. There is no pumpkin here, but the lack of discipline can be paid more flexion. Just in case, no one escapes in search of water from the fortress where it is being built with bags of dirt, even if the dust sticks to them in their face. They do nothing without the permission of the officer.

Education

They study training, parades, closed order, first aid and guidance techniques in rural areas. Personal defense and shots with short and long weapons. They teach them strategies to fight in cities and in open spaces. They use guns and rifles, exact army air replicas: instead of bullets, they throw plastic balls. But they're also not innocuous. Getting a shot in an eye with a plastic ball can lead to brutal injuries, so it is essential to wear glasses and mouth protectors. In Spain, its use by children under 14 years of age is prohibited.

Scandal

The principal says she understands that many would love to teach kids to use guns, but she defends this: "The kids who come here like these things, and what better than learning with specialists who know how they work. They do not touch the guns here unless we have given them a previous course, warning of how dangerous they are. If necessary, I can stick with those balls so they can understand it.

American model

These kinds of camps have come to fill the gap left by the end of military service and follow a fashion started in the United States. In it, these types of academies play an alternative role to juvenile centres to “correct” those who have tended to delinquency since their youth. But there they do not use replicas, but real replicas, with instructors from the National Rifle Society.

Exceptional conditions

This year the visit to a military base due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been abolished. All of them wear masks with Spanish flags and the three separate sections do not relate to each other, except when eating. Dr. Yolanda takes care that no one enters the camp without the test. The Ministry of Health and the Autonomous Communities have established a protocol for summer camps not to become hotbeds of pollution.

Indoctrination

There is no control over his pedagogical work, as it is believed that “leisure activities without educational value” are carried out, but the director has stressed that one of his main tasks is “training in values”. Among these values is nationalism, "something that we have lost and that we have to recover", according to González. The camp is called Don Pelayo and its shield is the image of the legendary leader of the Reconquista, crossed by a drill blade and a HK that is the rifle of the Spanish Armed Forces, on the national flag. Although this symbolism is related to the extreme right, the director has explained that in the camp "values" are mentioned and that values "have nothing to do with politics". In that sense, he explained that there are "a lot of people" who "have nothing to do with Vox." Some yes, like Gema, who is coordinator: He was a councillor for the pp in Torrejón del Rey (Guadalajara) and in the last municipal elections last year he presented himself to the candidature of Vox. The names of his initiatives evoke the Spanish imperial past (Grand Captain, Tercios de Lezo) and in some cases also the fascist (Millán Astray).

At the limit of the law

Jaume Carbonell, of the editorial board of El Diario de la Educación, has stressed that although there is a legal vacuum in leisure and leisure activities, the administration "is obliged to take care of the rights of children" and one of them is the right not to be doctrinated. As for the use of weapons, he says that the simulations are also out of place, because it is in contradiction with the current educational legislation. The main objective and principle of this law is, it is said, the following: “Education for peace, not only in education, but also in all areas: personal, family and social”. However, there is no legal proceedings against Don Pelayo.