"There will be no peace for those who are suffocating us": Madrid's public universities will go on strike over Ayuso's budget

Barcelona"If there's no respite for public universities, there will be no peace for those who are suffocating us: class by class, department by department, faculty by faculty, we are going to build a strike that will shake those who mistreat the right to a public university." With this phrase, the student platforms of the six public universities in Madrid (Complutense, Rey Juan Carlos, Carlos III, Autónoma, Politécnica, and Alcalá de Henares) stood up against the underfunding by Isabel Díaz Ayuso's government and called a two-day strike for "the end of November."

What has finally pushed Madrid's public universities over the edge is the same thing that sparked protests last yearThe draft budget planned by the Madrid regional government to fund public universities seems completely insufficient to them. According to calculations by university advocacy groups, the budget for public universities will fall from 0.44% to 0.46% of the regional GDP. Although the Madrid budget proposal includes a 6.5% increase in funding for public universities—around 75 million euros more than this year—the groups warn that anything less than approaching 1% of Madrid's GDP will be inadequate. "We can't even talk about..." rise"Instead, we are faced with a stagnant budget, and in the context of the severe underfunding we denounce," they emphasize in a statement. For all these reasons, the platforms encompassing students, professors, and workers from Madrid's public universities will announce the specific dates of the strike next week and do not rule out an indefinite mobilization. They have demanded that the regional government, led by Díaz Ayuso, adequately fund public universities. The Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities has stated that it respects the decision to exercise the right to strike "in the face of the financial strangulation that the government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso is imposing on public universities," since in Spain the management of public university resources is the responsibility of the regional governments.

4,000 euros difference per student between regions

The announcement of the strike comes as the Knowledge and Development Foundation (CyD) has published a report showing that Madrid, Catalonia, and Murcia are the regions that invest the least per university student. The study, based on data from the 2022-2023 academic year, reveals a difference of up to €4,324 between the region that invests the most per student (La Rioja, with €9,689) and the one that invests the least (Madrid, with €5,362). In this context, according to the CyD report, Catalonia is the second-lowest investor per student at public universities. In 2022, Catalan universities received €5,599 per student, just €237 more than Madrid, which is at the bottom of the investment rankings per student, and €4,087 less than the region that invests the most. In fact, Catalonia's investment per student is also one thousand euros below the European and Spanish average (6,671 euros). The study also compares how much each region collects from tuition fees at public universities. In this regard, Madrid (1,620 euros), Catalonia (1,508 euros), and Aragon (1,302 euros) were the regions that recorded the highest revenue from student tuition fees in 2022. Conversely, the lowest revenue occurred in Andalusia (835 euros).