Teachers’ unions across Catalonia have called an indefinite strike from 8 June after talks with the Catalan education department failed to produce an agreement on pay and resources.

The dispute is centred on Barcelona, where union leaders spent the night locked inside the department’s headquarters in protest. Ustec spokesperson Iolanda Segura said the unions expected more negotiating will from Education Minister Esther Niubó after Thursday’s short meeting, which she said remained stuck on how to address the complexity of classrooms.

According to the unions, the department’s latest proposal included an extra €400 gross a month per teacher over four years and more than 7,000 new posts over the next four academic years. Ustec, Secondary School Teachers, CGT and Intersindical said the offer had been inflated, because part of the pay rise was already planned at state level.

The unions said the real new increase was closer to €330 a month. That disagreement led 17 union representatives to lock themselves inside the department’s headquarters in Barcelona, while 20 union leaders remained there overnight as part of the protest.

Ramiro Gil, spokesperson for Secondary School Teachers’ Union Action, described the department’s role in Thursday’s talks as a blockade and said the minister’s attitude was arrogant. He said the dispute was about more than salaries, and argued that wider problems in what he called a bankrupt education system also need to be addressed.

Laura Gené, general secretary of the CGT’s Teaching Federation, called on Niubó to dialogue genuinely and leave ego and arrogance aside. She also criticised the Catalan government’s spending priorities, saying there must be resources for public education if there are funds for higher pay for the Mossos d’Esquadra, for what she described as unnecessary infiltrations, or for airport expansion.

The unions have warned for some time that they would not end the academic year normally without an agreement. The talks are aimed at avoiding wider disruption in schools across Catalonia. More Catalonia news