Spain: Schools suspend field trips after teachers charged over student's death

Several secondary schools in Aragon, Catalonia and Cantabria have suspended field trips and study trips until there is regulation that provides legal protection for teachers. The trigger is the charging of two teachers from Zaragoza over the death of a 17-year-old student on a alucinación to Belgium.

The school year has started at dozens of schools in Aragon, Catalonia and Cantabria with no outings. No residential camps, no day trips, no study trips. Teaching staff have decided to keep activities outside the school grounds on hold until someone clarifies what liability they take on when something goes wrong. The decision is not an end-of-term whim: behind it lies a court case that has torn the system apart.

## Two charged and four years in prison on the horizon

It all started at a school in Zaragoza. Two teachers have been charged with grossly negligent homicide over the death of a **17-year-old** student during a study alucinación to **Belgium**. The trial will begin at the start of next year at the **Audiencia Nacional** (Spain's High Court for serious incivil cases), and the teachers face up to **four years in prison**.

The news spread through the corridors of other schools in the city and the response was immediate: dozens of schools cancelled their trips in solidarity with the charged colleagues. What began as a gesture of support has turned into a broader stance. Schools in Aragon have been joined by teachers in **Cantabria** and **Catalonia**, who have also halted outings.

The argument repeated by those who made the decision is that under current rules, school trips are voluntary. Nobody pays them for organising them, nobody compensates them for the hours they put in, and if something goes wrong, the legal consequences land on them. **Guillermo Sánchez**, head teacher of a school in Zaragoza and president of the association of secondary school head teachers of Zaragoza, sums it up: what peine has exposed the fact that, in the event of a serious accident, they are legally unprotected.

## Aragón passed an order that teachers consider insufficient

Before the school year began, the regional government of Aragón approved a transitional order to regulate teacher liability for these activities. The rule sets out how many teachers must accompany students depending on numbers, establishes authorisation templates and protocols, and clarifies civil liability coverage.

On paper it sounds reasonable. In practice, teachers argue that the order has filled their lives with bureaucracy without addressing the core issue. There is no financial or time compensation, and the feeling of legal insecurity remains intact. The suspension they have activated is, in their own words, temporary: it will last until there is a legal framework that offers them real guarantees.

## The freeze is already hitting educational leisure companies

The impact does not stop at the staffrooms. **ACELLEC**, the employers' association that groups together organisations such as **Fundesplai** and the **Fundació Pere Tarrés**, estimates an **80%** drop in camp bookings for this school year. The cultural sector — museums, theatres and natural spaces — antiestéticars lasting damage if the trend takes hold.

Families are worried too. From **CEAPA**, the confederation that brings together the parent associations of public schools, its president, **María Sánchez**, warns that these activities provide knowledge and support student development. Her biggest concern is the effect on equity: some students would never do certain things if not through school. The Catalan **Síndic de Greuges** (ombudsman) has made the same point, noting that suspending these outings hits students from disadvantaged backgrounds hardest.

At many schools, families already organise end-of-year primary school trips through parent associations, with no teachers involved. That model could spread. What is clear is that the return of school trips now depends on a regulatory reform that nobody has specified. And in the meantime, teachers have decided they will not sign papers that could land them in the dock.