University protests in support of Palestine are spreading across Spanish campuses and are gaining particular intensity in Barcelona, ??where yesterday a strike and march was held with hundreds of students through the center of the city, while today is the eleventh day of the protest camp in the gardens of the historic building of the University of Barcelona (UB).
Half a hundred students spent the night in tents in the Plaça Cívica of the Universitat Autònoma (UAB) campus and yesterday morning they tried to cut off access to the complex by the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat. People avoided the pickets by taking an alternative route, there were no mobility problems around the campus, unlike those that have caused other student protests, and professors were able to hold classes as normal, according to sources at this university.
The UAB has not quantified the impact of the strike, although it was not significant. However, the UB was able to account for it easily: total shutdown in four of the 17 faculties. At the remaining 13, absolute normality. In the morning, pickets were placed at the entrances to the historic building and prevented access to the faculties of Mathematics and Computer Science and Philology and Communication, where classes were suspended. The same happened at the Raval headquarters, which houses the faculties of Geography and History and Philosophy. Meanwhile, the Prou ??Complicitat amb Israel coalition led a protest at the headquarters of Action, the Generalitat’s agency for the promotion of business internationalization, in Passeig de Gràcia. His performance, which was intended to be a tribute to the Palestinian prisoners, was aborted by a forceful action by the Mossos d’Esquadra.
At noon, a few hundred university students, to whom were added representatives of other groups – from the CGT to Marea de Pensionistes, through the Socialist Youth Organization, Internationalist Struggle, Union of Students of the Countries Catalans or Assemblea Llibertaria del Raval – gathered in front of the UB. They started a demonstration along the Gran Via and went up Roger de Llúria to Mallorca, in front of the Government Delegation, heavily guarded by riot police from the Mossos d’Esquadra and the National Police.
Emma Cercós, an Anthropology student and spokesperson for the Solidarity Committee with the Palestinian People of the UB, pointed out in her speech that in the USA two thousand students have been arrested for camping on campuses. He stated that the Palestinian people have been persecuted and massacred by Zionism for decades, accused Israel of practicing “the most media genocide in our history” and demanded the suppression of university relations with Israeli institutions and companies. He agreed with the rest of the speeches in refuting the “two-state solution”. “An absolute farce”, he said.
Despite the fact that they are a minority among the census of 60,000 students of the UB, those mobilized will maintain the indefinite encampment, a type of protest that began in Spain on April 29 at the University of Valencia. Jaén, La Rioja and Salamanca have been the last to join the camps. A sterile movement? The University of Granada (UGR) will hold an extraordinary governing council tomorrow to address the review of collaboration and relations with institutions of higher education in Israel that have not expressed “a firm commitment to peace and compliance with the international humanitarian law”.
The Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities (Crue), which includes 77 centers (50 public and 27 private), issued a statement yesterday on the occasion of the International Day of Peaceful Coexistence in which, without mentioning the Palestinian conflict Israeli, reaffirms its “firm commitment to a future of peace, coexistence and progress in our universities, and in the whole world”.
