Some years ago having a foreign classmate was something of an event for Spanish children. But today that has changed considerably with the numbers of school pupils originally from other countries growing in the province of Malaga, particularly on the Costa del Sol where one in five in the classrooms is foreign.
In the province there are a total of 25,000 foreign pupils which is nine per cent of the total (280,000). The overall percentage is doubled in the primary and secondary schools in Fuengirola (23 per cent), Mijas (21 per cent) and Benalmádena (19 per cent). And when places like La Cala or Benalmádena Costa are taken into account the figures show that in some schools there are more foreign children than Spanish. Of the 2,000 foreign pupils in Mijas, 750 are British, 170 are Moroccan and 120 are Argentinean and this trend is similar in Benalmádena and Fuengirola.
To deal with mixes of backgrounds most schools have Aulas Temporales de Adaptación Lingüistica (ATAL) - projects which involve combining normal class attendance with Spanish language learning, which new arrivals from other countries participate in for several weeks outside of the normal school timetable.
The figures
Malaga province: 280,000 pupils, 25,000 of which are foreign (8.9 per cent of the total).
Fuengirola: 8,900 pupils, 2,000 foreigners (23 per cent).
Benalmádena: 8,200 pupils, 1,500 foreigners (19 per cent).
Mijas: 9,500 pupils, 2,000 foreigners (21 per cent).
