The war has caused the arrival of more than 30,000 Ukrainian students to Spanish educational centers. But it is also increasing the presence of Russian children and adolescents whose families do not leave their country because of the bombs, but because of the economic consequences of the invasion and to avoid being called up. The Ministry of Education does not carry out a count of the arrival of Russian students, as it does with the Ukrainians, and, despite the fact that the increase is taking place in more autonomies, such as Catalonia, it is only aware of the phenomenon in the Valencian Community, the The only one that has officially transferred it, after the number of Russian students in schools and institutes in its territory has increased by 42% in the last two years, to a total of 4,321. And they continue to increase, explains Manuel Albadalejo, director of the Torrevieja Mediterranean public institute, in Alicante. “In our center we have 1,120 students, of whom about 120 are Ukrainians and about 85 Russians. But the number increases every day. Right now I have another application for a position in hand ”, he comments.
Ira, her husband and their two children, aged five and nine, arrived in Benitatxell, a town on the Alicante coast, last summer. “My husband’s company, which is international, closed its office in Russia due to the sanctions. And he, who is a programmer, was offered to move to another country, with the relocation expenses paid by the company, ”explains the woman by phone, who left her job as an accountant. Her eldest son studies in a private school, attended by many other children who speak Russian, and the youngest, in a public one. “We have stopped making long-term plans. Maybe one day we will return to Russia or go to live in another country. We would like to come back during the children’s holidays in the summer, but unless the situation changes, my husband will not be able to. He would not be able to work there, and there is a risk that another mobilization (to join the Army) will be announced, ”she says.
The director of the Mediterranean Institute of Torrevieja, one of the towns in the south of Alicante where there has been a large Russian and Ukrainian community for decades, which has now facilitated arrivals, affirms that there is a “plurality of profiles” among the new students coming from Russia. But in general they belong to an “upper middle” social class. They remind Albadalejo of the first wave of Ukrainians who arrived in the municipality shortly after the start of the Russian invasion, made up of families that in many cases already had second homes in the area and moved to live there, where their children they spoke English well, and the parents frequently drove high-end cars. Those first Ukrainian students were followed by a second wave, more numerous and extended over time, in which the social background was much more diverse, recalls the professor.
A good part of the new Russian students who arrive at his institute go to a school on Saturdays “where they help them prepare for the exams with which to obtain the degree in their country,” says Albadalejo, who believes that they also have a chance of passing the Spanish course. . “In general, they are motivated, and show knowledge in subjects where language is not as important, such as mathematics. Many of them may have failed seven or eight subjects in the first evaluation due to lack of knowledge of the language, and we still have a favorable forecast, because they are seen to have a very positive predisposition. That makes you regret that there are Spanish students who, knowing the language, have demotivation as their main element”.
separated at recess
At the center there have been no conflicts between Ukrainian and Russian students, says the director, but they have not mixed either. “In the recesses, for the most part, the Russians hang out with the Russians and the Ukrainians with the Ukrainians. We are trying, through the student association, to create conversation groups so that they can interact with the Spanish”. Lily Birchak, one of the 200 language assistants hired to facilitate the incorporation of Ukrainian students into Spanish schools, in her case in a public school in Orihuela, describes a similar situation. Like other of her colleagues, Birchik has also helped Russian children land at centers in classrooms, taking advantage of the fact that she speaks Russian. The 25-year-old girl arrived in the south of Alicante with her parents from Ukraine when she was six. And she for most of her life remembers a close relationship with her Russian neighbors. “I hardly noticed any differences. We were like the same community. But the situation has changed with the war. My parents, for example, had Russian friends with whom they don’t speak now.”
The Ministry of Education distributed 13.5 million last year to help the autonomous communities to welcome Ukrainian children. This year he plans to increase the game to 70 million, but he will not maintain the conversation assistant program, as he no longer considers it necessary. The directors of educational centers in the south of Alicante want to extend it, partly because it is helping them to manage the “avalanche” of Russian children, and the Valencian Generalitat is studying directly hiring the assistants.
There are young Russian parents who have settled in Spain to avoid being called up. Other parents have been moved by the fear that those mobilized were their children. This is the case of Okasana and her husband, who left Russia with her 17-year-old son, crossing the border with Kazakhstan by car and arriving in Barcelona in October. “I don’t want him to go to the army. Russia is an aggressor country and it is killing people. It is unfair and goes against human rights”, she affirms.
The number of Russian students in Barcelona has grown by 16% in two years, and everything indicates that it will continue to do so. In the 2021-2022 academic year (the war began in February 2022), 127 Russian students arrived in the city, and in the current year, up to December, 185 have already done so. Yasia, 12, who arrived with his mother Mila and his father Kirill to the city after Christmas and they still haven’t finished the school paperwork. The family has assumed that her stay is going to be long: “I don’t want to go back until Russia is a democracy, and that could take decades,” says Mila.
The experiences of the Russian children who are arriving in Spain are, in general, very different from that of their Ukrainian classmates, who fled from a country that is being devastated by the war started by Moscow. But that does not mean, says Sonia Fajarnés, director of the Sicília Institute in Barcelona, that they do not also need emotional support. “It is necessary to manage the fact that they have left everything, their house and their friends, to go live in a new place.” The youngest of Anastasia’s children, two years old, had just said the first words about him when he arrived in the Catalan capital in December. “But since hardly anyone here spoke Russian to him, he stopped speaking it,” laments his mother.
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