PSOE demands end to portable classrooms at Sagunto's IES Altos Hornos
More than 300 students enrolled outside the normal period in just two months is the figure PSOE will raise at Thursday's Sagunto council plenary, demanding two new schools, one high school and the unblocking of the CIPFP Eduardo Merello renovation.
More than 300 students enrolled outside the normal school registration period in just two months, that is the figure the Socialist council group will put on the table this Thursday at Sagunto's council plenary, when it presents a motion asking the regional Education Department (Conselleria de Educación) for two new schools, one secondary school and the unblocking of the renovation of the CIPFP Eduardo Merello vocational training centre. The immediate trigger is the portable classroom units that have long occupied part of the IES Altos Hornos school grounds, in Puerto de Sagunto: for the Socialist group (PSPV), these emergency classrooms have become a fixture instead of a temporary fix, and should not keep standing in for a real answer to the lack of school places.
The Socialist group backs its request with this year's own numbers: 341 extra enrolments in barely two months, with a forecast that the figure could near 1,000 by June. Last school year already closed with 850 of these unplanned enrolments, and in July the Municipal School Board (Consejo Escolar Municipal) had already raised the alarm twice, in two separate reports, about the shortage of free places and the difficulty of fitting in students who arrive once the school year has already started.
None of this is new to the City Council. Before September 2025, the council had already counted 2,700 students added on top of ordinary enrolment over just three school years, a trend the Education Department itself called critical at every stage of schooling. The same department went as far as admitting there were Bachillerato (pre-university) classes with almost 40 students at IES Camp de Morvedre, overcrowding it called intolerable.
Javier Raro, the PSPV spokesperson, sums up the Socialist argument in one idea: the portable classrooms solve nothing, they simply expose years of insufficient planning that the council has been flagging to the regional government since 2023. That is why the motion does not just ask for new buildings: it also demands that the Conselleria set a public timetable, with a removal date for the units tied to the opening of permanent facilities, and that in the meantime those portable classrooms meet minimum safety, accessibility and thermal comfort standards.
Among the projects the motion wants unblocked is the renovation of CIPFP Eduardo Merello, which already has 13.5 million euros approved under the regional Plan Edificant school-building programme, but which remains stalled. According to a late-September report by elperiodic.com, the block stems from a legal appeal (recurso de casación) filed by the regional government of Pérez Llorca against a court ruling that had struck down the order blocking the investment. Days earlier, the left-wing party Compromís had already put figures on that wider bottleneck: more than 20 million euros in pending educational investment in Sagunto, covering new schools, Plan Edificant and the Eduardo Merello renovation itself, plus a failed attempt to build a common front among parties at the plenary to demand it all together.
The vocational training (FP) waiting list has been on the table for just as long: back in September 2025 it already stood at around 400 students, and the council had by then spent over two years telling the regional government about the need to expand the school network without it turning into actual building work. PSOE is now also using the motion to take direct aim at the PP and Vox regional government, which it accuses of putting resources into matters it sees as less urgent while the city carries this shortage of places.
The motion goes to a vote this Thursday, and the Socialist group will need support from other parties if it wants the plenary to formally back a call for school planning that keeps pace with Sagunto's growing student population. Based on El Periódico de Aquí, with data from Sagunto City Council and elperiodic.com.