Sustaining an Inclusion Support Center

In April 2025, the Asprona Special Education Center in Almansa (Castilla La Mancha, Spain), which is part of theInternational Network of Schools for Inclusion and Equityof Quererla es Crearla, received the news that the regional educational administration was going to reduce the funding for the educational concert that subsidizes the center. This reduction was justified by a lack of enrolled students in the center. This is not a coincidence. Over the past seven years, they had been working with schools in the region – 22 educational centers in total across early childhood, primary, and secondary education – as a Specialized Advisory and Support Service (SAAE), and had managed to reduce the center’s enrollment from 22 students to 12, and by the 2024-25 academic year, there were no primary school students in its classrooms.

This, which is an extraordinary achievement on the path towards inclusion, was, however, punished by the administration. But the community rose up to support the center, at a time when feeling supported is crucial. Administrations, like society as a whole, must learn to recognize new paths that advance towards inclusion, and which constitute a fundamental form of structural transformation of our educational institutions. And so it was, because the campaign had an effect: the center lost the funding for one classroom, but gained the administration’s recognition for the model of support for mainstream schools that they have been developing through a three-year pilot project. This pilot will serve to build regulations that allow Special Education Centers (CEE) in the region to move towards becoming resource centers for inclusion.

This page compiles some of those scientific and general citizen supports. Keeping it in memory helps us see that collective resistances, well-argued, based on practices supported by pedagogy and human rights, yield results. And along the way, this center helped the rest of us to think, unite, and commit to what is right.