As every year, on October 11 the Colegio del Pilar in the Old City of Jerusalem opened its doors to celebrate Columbus Day and the Day of Pilar. The celebration was attended, among other authorities, the Ambassador of Spain in Tel Aviv, D. Fernando Carderera, the Consul General of Spain in Jerusalem, Juan José Escobar, and Consul Deputy of Spain in Jerusalem, Mr. Isidro Gonzalez shown in this photograph with the principal of the school, the mother Marta. The reception brought together a hundred people. Including local authorities, members of other Spanish and Latin American religious congregations, Spanish aid workers and journalists, the teachers of the school and the group of volunteers working for free in their daily management.
The school has 13 classrooms, in which 210 Palestinian girls study, both Christian (30%) and Muslim (70%) belonging to the poorest families in and around East Jerusalem, receiving education from preschool to high school. The curriculum taught follows the program of the Ministry of Education of the ANP and the girls learn four languages, Arabic, Hebrew, English and Spanish.
In addition to the intellectual formation that girls are provided, the Colegio del Pilar tries to instill a comprehensive training and human maturity and a deep spiritual and axiological education. To do this, good interpersonal and cooperative relations between the girls and the teachers, both Christian and Muslim are favored. In this way the school tries to help create a more tolerant and humane society, starting from childhood. This comprehensive education of girls has to pass on the benefit to their families, poor or low income mostly, although there are some cases of orphans and troubled families receiving special attention on three residences managed by the Missionary Sisters of Calvary.
Faced with the need to expand the number of classrooms-at increasing the number of pupils- the Holy Land Custody relented and renovated two additional properties. Between 2003 and 2011 the FPSC undertook important works for the renovation of its infrastructure through grants awarded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), for the period 2003-2005, the Queen Sofia Foundation, 2008- 2011, and the Community of Madrid, 2010-2011 that have also contributed to improving the quality of education. Today, the Obra Pia and Holy Land Custody still ceding the usufruct of the complex for free to perform its educational mission.
The Colegio de Nuestra Señora del Pilar was created following the foundation of a house of the Missionary Daughters of Calvary in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1922. The following year, the Spanish government granted them the usufruct of the “House of Spain”, a property that the Obra Pia had acquired during the reign of Isabel II. The house served as headquarters of the Consulate General of Spain, and continued to operate as such until 1949, when it came to occupy another extra walls building in the old city. On January 26, 1923, the Consul General of Spain in Jerusalem and the Holy Land Attorney General agreed to open a school that imparted quality education to the underprivileged children of the city. From then on the Spanish flag flutters on the school in the Old City of Jerusalem.