Education department distributes books on sexual diversity

VALENCIA’S secondary schools are to receive copies of LGTBI books from the Education Department.

Five titles, published by Valencian book companies, have been chosen to be distributed among the 738 publicly funded secondary schools in the region. There are three novels and two essays aimed at adolescent students that deal with sexual, family and gender diversity.

The objective is to enrich school and classroom libraries with material that address sexual, family and / or gender diversity and is part of the ongoing work towards implementing the Law of Equality of LGTBI Persons in the educational sphere.

General director of Educational Innovation and Planning, Reis Gallego, explains: “We live surrounded by diversity, differences and, therefore, in the classrooms diversity must be valued and made visible in a way that avoids the appearance of prejudices and, consequently, discrimination“.

The initiative comes just three weeks after a Castellón judge controversially approved the removal of similar literature from schools in the province. The ban was subsequently overturned.

Two of the novels won prizes in youth narrative competitions and one has just hit the bookshops. The books are: ‘El triangle rosa’, by Silvestre Vilaplana (Edicions Bromera, 2017); ‘Nada que esconder’, by Anna Boluda (Tabarca Llibres, 2017), and’ No hi havia a València … ‘, by Mercé Climent (Sembra Llibres, 2021). The other two titles are essays on sexuality and gender diversity.

Distribution by region

Each secondary school will receive one copy of the five books. So, 738 books will be distributed among 226 centres in the povince of Alicante, 94 in Castellón and 418 in Valencia. The 62 remaining copies will be kept as spares at the Education Department to replace any which are lost or damaged.