The president of the, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, will attend at 11.00 this Friday at the beginning of the academic year 2025-2026 in the classrooms of the University of Alcalá de Henares (UAH), although university students have summoned a demonstration for that same time in protest against it. Ayuso has assured that he will be “as always” and remembering “that politics cannot enter the classrooms, at the university.”
The demonstration was convened by students affiliated with the UGT union in the Plaza de San Diego, just at the doors of the UAH, to denounce “the serious infinance situation” (UCM). This study center has been forced to request a loan of 34 million euros from the regional government, which will be granted foreseebly, but that for university students “does not constitute a real solution, but a patch that perpetuates the problem.” As reported through a statement, the loan, far from strengthening autonomy, is “an intervention” of the UCM, since they consider that the conditions of the concession “can lead to improper surveillance and control by the Regional Executive.”
Ayuso, who was on Thursday in Seville to receive the Grand Prix of Honorable Escalate 2025, assured the press a few minutes before the event began, that he would attend the UAH this Friday despite the protest. “We will go to the beginning of the course, as always, with a beautiful speech, appealing to the quality and the freedom of education, wishing the best for Madrid university students, remembering that politics cannot enter the classrooms, in the university.”
That last sentence has been a mantra a thousand times repeated in recent days by the president and the spokesmen of the Government of Madrid, very criticized since the country revealed on Wednesday that the Executive was prohibiting the symbols of support to Palestine against Israel’s invasion in public schools.
In parallel, last Sunday the protests of citizens against the Israeli invasion and the participation of the Israel Premier-Tech team took place in Madrid ,. Ayuso discredited the protesters and their reasons, and then said that it was a “revolutionary boycott of the government” towards the region, a strategy that is not new for an autonomous community that remains in constant confrontation with the Executive of Pedro Sánchez. The sun clash has risen from decibels since.
2023 protest
In that context the appointment of Alcalá de Henares comes now. “University, science and culture have to stay out of politics, at least the ideological doctrine,” said Ayuso on Thursday in Seville, where the president also said that she would attend the UAH to defend a course that is “wonderful” because “Cervantes’ cradle deserves nothing else.”
The students will then receive it at the gates of the University, with the aim of reminding him that the UCM would not have had to ask for the extraordinary loan if the Community of Madrid gave public universities with the greatest budget. “The lack of adequate financing has been compromising year after year the budgetary stability of the public campuses of the region, which has led to begin to apply cuts in some of them, generating an unsustainable scenario for the whole of the university community,” the students argue in the statement.
In 2023, university students. In that case, the reason was the recognition of the president as “illustrious student” of the center. The award was an awkward moment for the president, when a student who had also been recognized for her curriculum rose to the stage and denied the award as a form of protest for the presence of the PP baroness. Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the Faculty of Information Sciences, students shouted for “university fascists!”
