Members of Acampada por Palestine from Madrid, who had set up a camp on the Complutense (UCM) campus since last May 7, occupied the Vice-rectorship of the center’s students this Friday.
A group of campers entered the building this Friday and held a sit-in to protest against the Israeli intervention in the Gaza Strip and in defense of Palestine and to demand that the universities sever relations with Israel.
“Palestine will win,” have chanted the several dozen people who have occupied the Vice-Rectorship and who also demand the condemnation of the “genocide” in Palestine, that relations not be maintained with Israeli centers and universities and that agreements be broken with companies that “finance the genocide,” reports the Europa Press agency.
The Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) published a letter in which it undertakes to “review and, where appropriate, suspend, collaboration agreements with Israeli universities and research centers.” In the statement, the rectors also committed to “intensify” cooperation with the Palestinian scientific and higher education system.
However, the Interuniversity Block of Madrid announced that the student camps on university campuses will continue in the face of what they described as “empty promises and words” from the CRUE and demanded the “total rupture” of all types of relationships and agreements with universities and companies in Israel.
The camping trip on the UCM University City campus started on May 7 to demand the end of Israeli intervention in the Gaza Strip and to vindicate “the right of the Palestinian people to exist.” The students thus demanded an end to the “genocide” in Gaza and criticized the “complicity” of the Government of Spain and the “ties” of university centers with “arms companies.”
These protests that began recently in universities in the United States have spread to Spanish universities. The first protest took place on Monday, April 29, at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Valencia, organized by BDS País Valencià and Students for Palestine, where the reception has been quite notable.
It is not the first time that actions have been carried out by Spanish students in favor of Palestine. The Student Council of the University of Extremadura held a minute of silence for the victims of the conflict on October 31, 2023, and several students from the Public University of Navarra joined a platform in support of Palestine on November 6, 2023. that same year, calling for a partial academic strike at his university and asking to “stop the massacre in Gaza.”
On May 3, Germán Gutiérrez, vice president of Institutional Relations of the Coordinator of Student Representatives of Public Universities, announced to other media that student councils or student groups could join these protests throughout these days, as It finally happened this week.
The student organization has assured that “there are few” university campuses where a camp or protest in favor of Palestine has not been scheduled.
The Coordinator supports all the protests in favor of Palestine that the students have carried out in the different universities of the territory.
