BARCELONA – Almost all state school playgrounds in Spain have concrete football fields. To ‘prevent groups from being discriminated against’, the regional government is now considering removing them.
The Ministry of Education of the Catalan Government will present the new guide for the architecture of schools in a few weeks. The editors of the TV3 Planta Baixa program have seen the guide and released the news about the imminent change in Catalan schoolyards. The Generalitat wants to remove the football fields “to prevent groups of children from being discriminated against”.
No longer macho
“The schoolyards are going to change: it is no longer mandatory to have a football field. The goal is that the courtyards are no longer macho,” according to the Catalan television program.
The new guide explains that “boys normally play more than girls” on those football fields. “Now it is only mandatory that this space be reserved and that each school determines how it is used or furnished,” the guide reads.
The roles of boys and girls should be more balanced. Football will therefore no longer take up all sporting prominence in schools, which must promote other activities as well.
