"El abecedario del diablo": the children's game that scandalized the parents and the Spanish authorities

It started in mid-April. Some students of the IES Astures de Lugones, a secondary school located near the city of Oviedo, in the Principality of Asturias, began arriving at clbades with strange injuries to the hands and wrists.

The teachers of the educational center, which enrolled 165 students in the first year of high school –course in which there were more cases (40)-, they interviewed the teenagers to try to discover the origin of these marks.

In fact, it was a children's game that wasuramente interviewed by adults and authorities. The practice is known as "The Devil's Alphabet", "The Chinese Alphabet" or simply "The Alphabet", and is that a child scratches the back of the hand to another while reciting the letters of the alphabet from A to Z and says a word that starts with each of them.

"We started to see with suspicion that children came with wounds on their hands, a case that could be fortuitous, but when we saw that it was starting to spread, it was when we decided to take children for tell us what these marks were and they explained what the game was like, "said school principal Mario Prendes.

What alarmed the officials is that this seemingly harmless practice reflects a problem directly related to bullying. "This is a serious problem, there is a student leader who, to maintain his position as such, chooses the victims among the weakest to resist," said Mario Prendes.

In the particular case of the Asturian school, four pupils were cataloged with "serious injuries"; so-called one of them would have even presented a mild infection.

Alerts on campus so intensified that the authorities decided to expel any student who arrived with this type of injury on their hands. The decision provoked some controversy because, according to the students' testimony, some were literally forced to participate in the game.

Leaders also fear that, by viralizing the challenge, this practice will spread to other parts of Spain because, as we know, this is not a dynamic that was invented recently. But its reappearance could put it back in fashion.

The Association against School Harbadment (ACAE) in the European country has already alerted parents and teachers about the spread of this dangerous practice, so that it can be detected in time and can be eradicated.

According to the newspaper Lto the voice of Asturias, "The Devil's Alphabet" is not the only game that runs through schools. Another practice called chopped off is to make marks with a cutter at strategic points of the wrists or feet and to upload the photo on Instagram with a message of victory: "Challenge reached"