When teaching becomes precarity: the state of Catalonia’s teaching profession

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Aurora Trigo Catalina

Over the past fifteen years, and almost without public notice, teachers in Catalonia have seen their purchasing power ebb away and their professional dignity steadily eroded. What began as an ostensibly temporary pay freeze has hardened into a deep-rooted, long-term decline — one that affects not only teachers’ quality of life but the future of state education itself.

A recent study makes the point bluntly: this is no collection of isolated decisions but a sequence of interlocking cuts that have left the teaching pay structure looking like a shattered mirror (Trigo and Gascó, 2025). This situation carries not only individual economic consequences. They corrode the dignity of the profession and place at risk the very core of educational quality. Aristotle long ago observed that “what we do day in, day out becomes what we are”; when teaching takes place under sustained pressure and growing precarity, it is society as a whole that ultimately pays the price.

In what follows, I sketch the study’s key findings — the wage erosion, the stalled sexenni system, the shrinking of extra payments, the absence of competitive examinations for catedràtic¹ posts — and explain why, once Purchasing Power Parity is factored in, Catalonia emerges as the second worst-remunerated region in Spain for secondary teachers.

A structural loss of purchasing power

In recent years, the economic situation in Catalonia and Spain has been marked by high inflation, which has eroded the purchasing power of all workers, including secondary teachers. The result is unequivocal: between 2010 and 2024, secondary teachers lost more than a fifth of their purchasing power (–21.64%).

As shown in Table 1, the underlying reason is straightforward: prices have risen faster than salaries. Over this period, cumulative inflation in Catalonia reached 35.69%, while salary increases for teachers amounted to only 14.05%. In real terms, this means that a newly appointed teacher ends up with around €7,757 less in real gross annual income — the equivalent of working more than two months a year without pay”.

Table 1. Inflation, pay rise and purchasing-power loss among teachers in Catalonia

SOURCE: INE (2025), Índices por comunidades autónomas: general y de grupos ECOICOP. http://www.ine.es. Ministeri de Política Territorial i Funció Pública (2025), Retribuciones del personal funcionario. https://www.sepg.pap.hacienda.gob.es

Cuts that exceed the payslip: a web of accumulated losses

In addition to the loss of purchasing power, Catalonia’s secondary teachers have faced a wider network of cuts that have altered their living standards and working conditions. Among the most significant are:

• June and December extra payments reduced to 80% of the monthly wage. Before 2010, they formed an essential part of the salary.

• Cuts to the sexenni² supplement: from 2012, the first stage was extended from six to nine years, delaying and reducing the associated remuneration. Although partially reinstated in 2024, the government has not yet addressed the accumulated debt, estimated at around €1,100 per teacher per year.
• No competitive examinations for catedràtic posts: since 2011, no new senior teaching posts have been opened, blocking career progression and depriving experienced teachers of roughly €2,796 a year.
• Abolition of the “classes passives³” pension scheme: new civil servants have been moved to the general Social Security system, which entails lower pensions and later retirement.
• Indirect cuts: the scrapping of paid study leave, an increase in teaching hours to 20 per week, the elimination of the two-hour reduction for teachers over 55, the withdrawal of the early retirement top-up, the suspension of employer-provided healthcare cash plans, and others.

Catalonia at the bottom of the regional comparison

According to comparative analysis with other autonomous communities, Catalonia’s teaching staff ranks among the three worst remunerated in the country. The study warns that the situation is even more serious when Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is applied — that is, when the cost of living (housing, services, consumption) is taken into account. The analysis shows that, relative to the cost of living, teachers’ salaries in Catalonia fall up to 13.5% below the national average and 24% below communities such as Castilla-La Mancha.

Broader effects: from Individual discouragement to collective risk

This mismatch — low salaries combined with a high cost of living — highlights that remuneration is not merely a nominal issue but one of dignity and sustainability within the teaching profession. The combination of reduced pay, loss of purchasing power and lack of recognition produces wider effects:

• Brain drain and a disincentive to enter state education: many teachers ultimately reject a career in education due to instability or because the conditions fail to guarantee a dignified life, especially in areas with high living costs. This trend worsens staff shortages, particularly in oversubscribed specialities. The study notes that a significant number of cover posts remain vacant.
• Deterioration of educational quality: high pupil–teacher ratios, a lack of resources for inclusive education, administrative and teaching overload, and a sense of professional devaluation all hinder excellence and motivation.
• Territorial inequalities and structural injustice: that a teacher should earn less depending on the region in which they work, despite identical responsibilities, represents unjustifiable discrimination — one that particularly penalises Catalonia, a community with relatively high living costs.

Conclusions: dignifying teaching is an investment in the future

Secondary teachers in Catalonia are not only underpaid: they face a situation of structural injustice that jeopardises the dignity and sustainability of the profession. The combination of reduced salaries, loss of purchasing power, cumulative cuts and the lack of professional recognition has created a pattern of structural precarity that now threatens the entire educational system.

Investing in education is not merely an administrative decision: it is a commitment to society’s future. Restoring teachers’ purchasing power, ensuring a fair and dignified career structure and dignifying the teaching profession are not optional choices — they are urgent necessities if we want to avoid the brain drain and the degradation of educational quality.

As Hannah Arendt wrote, “education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it”. Without well-paid and respected teachers, that responsibility remains unfulfilled. Society cannot afford for those who educate future generations to work under conditions that undermine their dignity and commitment.

It is time to move from denunciation to action: to restore salaries, to recognise teachers’ professional trajectories and to invest boldly in education. Only then can we ensure that teachers — and, with them, their students — enjoy a dignified and sustainable future.

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¹ Catedràtics are senior teachers within secondary education, roughly equivalent to advanced or higher-grade posts that carry additional responsibilities and higher pay.

² In Catalonia, teachers receive a salary supplement known as the sexenni for every six years in which they complete a required amount of recognised professional development. Each sexenni is cumulative and permanently enhances their pay.

³ Classes passives is the former Spanish civil-service pension scheme, which provided defined-benefit pensions that were generally more favourable than those offered under the general Social Security system.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons