The college catalans have taken command of the social response to the judgment of the procés. The pressure from student groups —with strikes continuing and running of the bulls in the powers preventing access to classrooms— has positioned the cloisters in favor of the procés and flexible assessment to combine the classes with the protests. Although with less follow-up that the first few days, the Catalan universities are facing a new week of strikes, indefinite and the focus placed in the camp of the plaza Universitat of Barcelona, where 200 tents keep you cut off the Gran Via for the sixth consecutive day.
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The tension of the protests moves to the university students take to the street against the sentenciaseten
The University of Lleida was the first to be mobilized, following the judgment of 14 October. This week, half a hundred students were locked up in the rector’s office and for five school days blocked its activity and crippled the classrooms of Philology, which are processed in the same building. Were the first to suspend classes by decree. Its cloister was also the first to adopt a manifesto critical against the sentence and demand the freedom of the prisoners. We also validated declaring persons non grata to Philip VI, to the delegate of the government in Catalonia, Teresa Cunillera, and the judge Manuel Marchena.
But the pulse of the first days, now they keep students in Barcelona, has lost bellows in Lleida. Thursday at noon, expect a new rally outside the rector’s office. Gathered little more than 40 people. Some joked that they would not be sufficient to lift the banner that announced: “When tyranny is law, revolution is order.” Teresa, a student of Journalism of 20 years, was among them. The young man defended, “the occupation of the rectory”. “The aim was to break with the normality of immediate and peaceful”, he defended. “Being the university a space to create critical thinking, we believe that in a situation so exceptional we must position ourselves”, stated.
With the flexibility of the assessments and the positioning of its cloisters, against the judgment and in favor of the prisoners, the Catalan universities have already taken sides. Although they also have come voices of dissent, such as that of the 800 teachers from all over Spain who have signed a letter against the manifest of the cloisters. The guiding defend the neutrality of the institutions and suggest that they have their hands tied in certain situations, such as the running of the bulls or the proposals of the cloisters.
The pressure from some student groups has taken effect, and the University has become the spearhead of the protests of the procés. However, the follow-up is not as massive as the noise of their actions. Last Wednesday, the students were called to the strike, but in Lleida, the follow-up, as the previous week, was not relevant. “Normal life has been overwhelming. The students who have supported the strike are between the 5% and 10%,” explains the vice president of institutional policy of the University of Lleida, spain Francisco Garcia.
college students face another week of paros with unequal support
A day earlier, in the Pompeu Fabra university in Barcelona, a group of students blocked access to the three campuses to claim the single assessment, a model voted on and rejected a few days earlier by his cloister. There were clashes verbal between the locked and those who wanted to go to class. In the end, the rector gave in and eased the evaluation. However, on Wednesday, a day of strike, support to the strikes did not reach the 20% in the most of cases.
The forum of the intranet of the University of Lleida illustrates how the positions in the procés have been tensioned together. Dedicated to academics, now is also a space for political disputes. “The club environment, as I and those who want to come to study, we are very badly seen, because from both sides we require that us posture,” says a employee, who requested anonymity. Oriol Casanovas, representative of students in the faculty of Law, is “outraged”. “Beyond my political ideology, I would defend the neutrality of a public institution. Imagine that in a university to lock up the logo of Citizens, or make it a manifesto saying ‘Live sentence’. It is unthinkable,” illustrates the young.
The pulse of the student is kept now in the camp of the Gran Via. The protesters took part yesterday in a cacerolada to the hotel you are staying at the king Felipe VI.
