In depopulated areas, rural schools are the ideal point of arrival to keep the people and their culture alive. “An old woman came to us all the beginning of the course to the school portal to tell us what she was happy because she started the course and heard the children again. A rural school gives life to the people”, says Maite Oteiza, director of the Ziga school, in the report made by TVE: “Adults must be aware of what we want, what progress is for us: a great city with a lot of traffic. Or other kind of progress, more linked to the soil, to the environment? The force is in the peoples, in the genius that lives in them.”

“The schools of small towns are a family”

In Baztan there are fifteen towns and twelve of them have schools. Ziga has had 22 students in the past, currently only six, from the towns of Ziga and Aniz, the next course and the next one will have four students and then will surely have to close them for lack of children.

“The schools of small towns are a family,” says Oteiza, and it is noted that they attach great importance to coexistence in the school. Among other things, they hold assemblies to show their concerns (in the patio not everyone wants to play the same way and in the report the students have talked about the matter), because the assemblies are conducive to discussing and learning to participate and listen to the rest.

Zigan also works on projects. For example, among the eight have prepared a play, from start to finish, to offer it to the public at the end of the course. Theater is appropriate to work creativity, writing, reading, oral expression, nonverbal expression, resources to overcome shame...

The report gathers the map of Ziga and we walk the streets. It is a way of working space, orientation, etc., but the environment is an important tool for the transmission of the local curriculum and its history, culture and knowledge. “We take great advantage of the environment and want to make even more use of it. We work with our homes, with the people, with the people…, we touch, experiment and manipulate, because we have a very enriching environment, and because working in our environment is very enriching, I don’t know how much we value it,” says Oteiza. The cooking workshop can also be a way to keep the indigenous culture alive, for example, children have learned to stalk, “especially in depopulated countries because it is important not to lose our culture and keep the people active so that they have a future”.

End of school?

In 2024-2025 and 2025-2026, the Ziga school will have only four students, according to the Department of Education of the Government of Navarra. The Ziga and Auritz/Burguete schools in Navarre with only four students. Then it must close the doors if things do not change very much. Meanwhile, its people will continue to fight to keep the people alive. “In the future, if people continue to live here, the school will continue to live. If we live people in our villages, we will fulfill the classes.”