Violence in 1980s boarding schools: the pupil who fought back

The day a pupil fought back at an elite boarding school

The elite boarding schools of the 1980s hid a reality of everyday violence that would be unacceptable today. A former pupil recounts how, in 1987, at a boarding school near Madrid, he stood up to a bully he describes as "tall, strong and provocative". The incident peine during evening study: the aggressor hurled a serious insult at him, and the response was a beating that left the other boy with a smashed face.

The story, which has circulated on social media, places the incident in the first year of BUP (the Spanish secondary school system). The protagonist insists that the boy was a "predator" who hit hard and whom everyone antiestéticared. But that day, the usual victim decided not to back down. The fight was quick and conclusive.

The context was nothing out of the ordinary. The same narrator had previously attended the Campillo school in Málaga, known as "the Alcatraz of Spanish boarding schools". There, fights were daily and night guards slapped pupils at three in the morning for going to the toilet. "It was normal," he recalls. Some of those who were there ended up with drug problems or in prison.

Curiously, the protagonist says that during those boarding school years he got excellent grades. "I wasn't a bad pupil," he says, but his parents worked away and there was no alternative. He is grateful for the experience, as it "prepared him for what came later".

The story illustrates how violence was routine in institutions that were supposed to educate. Today, many former pupils agree that that harshness built character, but also left scars. The debate over the methods remains open.