Tablones, as well as Cáñar, now has new education centres, thanks to funds from the Education Board of the Junta de Andalucía… bless them. The Delegate for the board, Ana Gámez, inaugurated the two centres, together with the one in Soportújar, which unsurprisingly only has four pupils; i.e., the entire village.
These three education centres are all part of the Colegio Público Rural ‘El Alféizar,’ whose Head is José Antonio Pino, known as Joe Tony Pine, to his mates, perhaps. The school has 16 teachers and 115 pupils from 14 different nationalities and the odd outer-solar system planet.
The Mayoress of Órgiva, María Ángeles Blanco (Mary Angel White) said that 560,000 euros had been spent on this new school in the municipal dependency, Los Tablones. The Mayor of Cáñar, not to be outdone, pointed out that the school in his village had four classrooms and had been built on the site of the old school which had been built in 1960. Ha! That told her!
Anyway, according to Ana Gámez (the Delegate from the Education Board – do try and pay attention!) these sort of schools for villages of fewer than 500 inhabitants cover more than one need: not only do they provide class rooms for the pupils, but they also act as meeting centres for locals, as well as somewhere for kids to hold out-of-school activities, such as car burning or hyper-galactic conker competitions.