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Teachers 'living on streets' on Spanish islands loved by Brits as tourists as blamed


Spaniards working in the Balearic Islands are struggling even more to find affordable accommodations as the high tourist season approaches, it has been claimed. 

The Balearic Islands region is, together with the Community of Madrid, Spain’s most expensive area when it comes to housing, according to the National Statistics Institute.

Teachers are a particularly vulnerable category when it comes to struggling to find an affordable place to live, given their low salary compared to the eye-watering cost of rent and lack of availability particularly in the warmer months.

Alex, a 25-year-old from Mallorca, moved to Formentera in February after being assigned a teaching post to replace a colleague on sick leave.

The young teacher has spent his first few weeks on the island in a 376-foot studio costing him around £515 a month. 

However, his landlady has now warned him she will be back in mid-May to spend the summer on the island and, since he didn’t sign a rental contract, he has no choice but to leave.

Leaving his teaching post in Formentera could have negative consequences on his career, as he would be excluded for two years from the interim pool from which temporary teachers are selected.

The teacher told local publication El Diario: “If I have to camp on the beach, I will do it. What I’m not going to do is self-boycott my career because homelessness is not considered a compelling reason to leave a job.” 

Alex revealed some of his students’ parents have offered him a room they would otherwise rent to tourists during the summer.

However, he said: “Some solutions have been presented to me, but this is not how this problem should be solved.”

This young teacher is not alone in his housing struggle, with the Spanish news outlet reporting sources from the regional Ministry of Education saying: “It is a structural problem that affects all professionals, such as waiters, policemen or health workers.” 

Formentera isn’t the only island in the Balearics where teachers face homelessness due to a lack of affordable housing, the cost of which is pushed up by the high demands for accommodations created by tourism during the summer months. 

In Ibiza, negotiations are underway to draw up an agreement with hotel and catering companies to facilitate teachers’ access to housing, and sources from the Ministry of Education claimed to the Spanish news outlet that the regional government will work with tourist flats and hotels to make more housing available to teachers.

The regional government has also pledged to raise salaries over the next two years in a bid to fill teaching vacancies in areas where housing is an issue. 

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