A secondary school teacher in Catalonia earning more than €2,300 net per month lost his job after repeatedly refusing to grade students and skipping required meetings, while also working from home without permission. The Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Cataluña confirmed the firing was justified, drawing a clear line in the debate over teachers’ duties and private schools’ authority.
The dispute began in late 2021. The teacher had worked at the private school since 2011 on a permanent part-time contract when he filed a complaint with the Inspección de Trabajo y Seguridad Social. He said the school was breaching his contract by assigning him more non-teaching hours than allowed, including some in the afternoon. In May 2022, the school issued a formal order: finish work at 13:30 and leave the building, except for Monday staff meetings. It also barred him from taking on tasks or working remotely without approval. The school warned that further breaches could lead to disciplinary action.
A summary published by Libertad Digital said the teacher kept missing mandatory meetings and performing some work without authorization, despite repeated warnings from the school administration.
At the start of the 2022-23 school year, he missed every Monday meeting and continued sending weekly emails listing tasks he had completed outside official hours through telework, contrary to the school’s instructions. The administration sent him a registered letter restating the rules, asking him to explain his absences and telling him to stop reporting unauthorized telework. The school did not punish him for earlier absences, hoping to resolve the dispute. He resumed attending meetings after October 17, but continued to defy the instructions.
By late October, the teacher wrote that his schedule left only four half-hour breaks a week for planning and grading, too little time to manage the workload. He accused the school of refusing to say which tasks he should drop or prioritize, then complained again to the labor inspectorate. In November and December, he sent weekly updates on duties he had not completed or had only partly completed. That December, he failed to grade some subjects for first-, second- and fourth-year ESO students.
On January 24, 2023, the school dismissed him for disciplinary reasons, citing disobedience and breach of good faith, as well as a deliberate reduction in his work. Both the Social Court No. 25 of Barcelona and the Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Cataluña upheld the dismissal. The courts found that his actions amounted to serious misconduct and did not violate Fundamental Rights. The full ruling is available on the official judicial website.
Spanish labor law allows workers to challenge disciplinary dismissals within 20 working days. Courts assess the seriousness of the misconduct and whether the employer followed proper procedures. Here, both the first-instance and appellate courts found the dismissal procedente, or justified, in light of repeated insubordination and breaches of duty, information from calculadoralaboral.es.
The teacher’s complaints about workload and scheduling may be familiar to others in the field, but the courts found that his repeated defiance of the school’s orders justified dismissal. In other legal disputes, including those reported earlier, Catalan courts have enforced school discipline when they found the facts clear and the process properly followed.
The verdict affirms private schools’ right to set and enforce clear boundaries, including for long-serving staff. It also makes clear that appeals to workload or autonomy do not override direct instructions or repeated warnings. For Catalonia’s education sector, the ruling defines limits on professional independence as determined by the courts.
