Three years after the promises, IES Las Viñas remains in an untenable situation, with no response from the Junta de Andalucía and with overcrowding that is plain to see, and a winter of protests by the educational community is in prospect as they demand an effective and urgent solution.
Casares Town Hall announced on 7 October a meeting held on Thursday 2 October at which the educational community of IES Las Viñas in Manilva once again demanded that the Junta de Andalucía provide an urgent solution to the serious overcrowding at the school.
The complaint comes three years after the regional administration, through the then territorial delegate Miguel Briones Artacho, publicly committed in September 2022 to speeding up the procedures for the construction of a new secondary school in Manilva. Since then, no real progress has been made.
From promises to neglect
During that official visit on 20 September 2022, the territorial delegate and several officials from the Regional Education Department stated that the new school was «a priority» and that timescales would be shortened «as far as possible».
Today, in October 2025, the reality is very different: IES Las Viñas continues to be overwhelmed, with more than 1,300 pupils and class sizes exceeding 30 students per classroom, reaching 33 in some groups.
In years such as 1st and 2nd year of ESO (compulsory secondary education), enrolment now extends as far as group H, a reflection of the extreme overcrowding at the school, which also continues to depend on prefabricated classrooms that were meant to be a temporary solution and have become permanent.
A structural problem that has been ignored
IES Las Viñas provides ESO, Bachillerato (sixth-form studies) and several vocational training courses (electrical installation and administration, among others), but its facilities have been clearly inadequate for years for a school population that is constantly growing, with pupils from Casares, Manilva and Sabinillas.
Both the school’s AMPA (parents’ association) and the town halls of Casares and Manilva state that this situation violates the right to a decent education of good quality, and point out that modular classrooms are not an acceptable solution.
They demand political responsibility and immediate action
The educational community insists that the problem is not short-term but structural, and that it requires immediate action and a lasting solution from the Junta de Andalucía.
The commitments made in 2022 have amounted to nothing more than statements, and families are demanding action, not more promises, so that students in the area can learn in suitable conditions.
«Three school years have passed since that meeting and we are the same or worse. Words and meetings do not build classrooms,» some people at the school told us.
Photo: Casares Town Hall
