The Teacher Who Promised the Sea

Ricardo Ramos

I might remember it wrong, but I possibly met Sergi Bernal at the RIDEF in León. Maybe we were on the same bus to El Bierzo, and perhaps he was introduced to me while filming his documentary, which at that time didn’t have an ending yet. His film (*The Portraitist*) is about the archaeological discovery of the school notebooks of Antoni Benaiges' school group, a teacher murdered by fascism in 1936 in Spain. I probably said to him, "Sergi, that woman in row 7 is Chela de Tapia. She has a school in Mexico City that takes her students to the Gulf every year, to Patricio Redondo's school, where there is a sea."

 

 

A few years later (2024), my daughters and I watched *The Teacher Who Promised the Sea* in Oaxaca, and I am sure of the following: Benaiges' moving story is a universal testament to Freinet's pedagogy and its potential to transform society—in every girl who discovers herself as an artist, in every boy who admires how hardworking his father is, and in every classroom that collectively dreams of the unknown. I was moved to watch the film alongside the great-granddaughters of a Republican teacher exiled in Mexico and with my friends from the MCEP. If I hadn’t had a lump in my throat, I would have shouted, "España / mañana / será republicana... Spain / tomorrow / will be a Republic!"