Mayor goes on hunger strike in bid to get a secondary school built for his town in Spain

The mayor of a small town in central Spain went on indefinite hunger strike this week to demand that the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha build a secondary school in his town. Agustín Jiménez Crespo is the 76-year-old mayor of Noblejas in Toledo province.

The school he is calling for would be the first secondary school in this town of 4,000 inhabitants, where currently children have to travel 10 kilometres once they finish primary school to the nearby town of Ocaña.

"I am cool and calm, and I am thinking about what lies ahead and that we are absolutely right with our educational model for Noblejas and the entire region," explained the mayor, who recalled that the regional authorities approved the secondary school project in 2011.

The hunger strike also serves to "publicly denounce the refusal of the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, to solve this problem despite it being a project that was committed to many years ago and is absolutely necessary to guarantee the education of young people in Noblejas and the region."

The Castilla-La Mancha regional government, which is run by the PSOE Socialist party, the same party as the mayor, argues that Noblejas only provides between 40 and 60 students a year to the secondary school in Ocaña and that its population increase does not currently justify the construction of a new school.