“Bitches come out of your burrows like bunnies, you nymphomaniac whores, I promise you’ll all fuck in the cape. Let’s go Ahuja!” shouts a young man from a window, and immediately the blinds of the facade begin to rise and dozens of boys start screaming and hitting. This terrible scene was witnessed last Sunday at the Elías Ahuja men’s college affiliated with the Complutense University of Madrid, and the insults of the men, residents of this center, were thrown at the young women who live in the Santa Mónica college, female , located directly opposite. The video spread like wildfire on social media. The school has apologized, expressed its condemnation and stated in a statement that the internal regime provides for an expulsion “in serious cases like this”. The director of the center has reported that it is an expelled student. This is the young man who started the action and the school is investigating which other students are involved.
The deputy director of Elías Ahuja, Álvaro Nieto, told this newspaper that the school management met on Monday and decided to expel the leader of the group. They spoke to his parents and gave him 24 hours to find somewhere else to live. As he said, the measure should be permanent, but not automatic. That is, now a procedure is opened in which the student must be heard. A file is opened and the student has 15 days to make allegations. Nieto stressed that the center has 174 school children and that not all participated in the verbal aggression. Since cameras are located in the hallways, they examine which students have moved to the area of the school that faces Santa Monica. The Capea, scheduled to take place this month, has been suspended.
The vice-chancellor of the Complutense students, Rosa de Lafuente, moved into the center this Thursday, where she met with the management, and told this newspaper that they will launch a low-key investigation. This was confirmed by the university’s own Twitter account, where it was reported that they will open an “information file” and “work with the other universities to impose sanctions on the students involved”. De Lafuente added that the file can lead to sanctions, including expulsion from the university, but this measure can only be applied to complutense students, who are a minority despite having priority enrollment in that accommodation. However, the vice chancellor has no doubt that the rest of the public and private universities will make decisions in the same direction. Until this morning, during her meeting with the press, she had not seen the video. He has stressed that the investigation they will conduct will not be “punctual and individual” but will go back in time.
The Council of Spanish Universities, an association representing 115 institutions and 17,000 university students, has issued a statement in which it “unanimously and unequivocally condemns this type of attitude” and considers the images “unacceptable and inappropriate by university students and democratic citizens”. . It said the laws are not representative of the residential community and fully support all educational and disciplinary measures that can help eliminate these behaviors and achieve gender equality in college and in all spheres of society.
Sánchez calls for a “unified response”
The scene has drawn outrage and condemnation from hundreds of people on the networks. Even Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has spoken out. “We cannot tolerate this behavior that breeds hate and attacks women. It is particularly painful to see that the protagonists are young people. Don’t step back. Gender equality policy is necessary. Enough machismo!” he tweeted this Thursday. Arriving in Prague at the European Political Community Summit, Sánchez called for a “broad, unified response and common rejection.” “It is important that all political parties say no to any sexist behavior,” he continued.
Politicians of various formations have condemned the events. The Minister for Equality, Irene Montero (Podemos), said: “It shows that we need comprehensive sex education, so that all children, young people in our country learn that good treatment is good and bad treatment is bad, and the culture of sex.” Learn about consent and that we do not continue to perpetuate a culture of rape and sexual terror that portrays women as sex objects. And he added: “Right now, this is the most obvious sign that there is a lack of sex education in this country, and it is also necessary for institutions to stop legitimizing sexist discourses that deny violence and deny women equal rights.”
The minister of the presidency, socialist Félix Bolaños, has described the scene as “terrible” in an interview with Cadena Ser and has insisted on equality policies, as has the minister for universities, Joan Subirats (of the Common), who has explained on Twitter that his department “is in contact with the university to coordinate the response to events that should not be repeated”. The Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP), has described the attitude of young people as “degrading, sexist and disgusting”. The president of the New Generations of the same party, Beatriz Fanjul, declared in the corridors of Congress this Thursday: “It is not appropriate at all. It is a pity that today the youth join these cries and a condemnation, of course as young people, as women and as people.
We cannot tolerate these behaviors that breed hate and attack women. It is particularly painful to see that the protagonists are young people.
Don’t step back. Gender equality policy is necessary.
No more machismo! https://t.co/XHqHIGlq2A
– Pedro Sanchez (@sanchezcastejon) October 6, 2022
In addition to these images, a text from 2000 written in the magazine Elías Ahuja by the former President of the PP Pablo Casado, who lived at the university when he was a law student, has also spread on social networks. In the text, the former People’s President sarcastically paints a general portrait of the Ahuja disciple, whom he humorously calls Lupus Ahujus Hispanorum. The text is teeming with sexist comments. “One of their most coveted prey are the wolves. However, in the absence of these, he likes to fall back on other animal species such as sows, foxes, chickens…” wrote Casado, who also described the student as “one of the most promiscuous and lascivious of the Iberian Peninsula”, who posed a real threat to integrity every woman of the animal kingdom who is in a phase of sexual maturity.”
The director of the residence, Manuel García Artiga, spoke to the media this Thursday. “We absolutely, radically, totally condemn these statements, they are completely contrary to the values of the college, are unacceptable and inexplicable,” he told Cadena Ser. According to his story, the night watchman and himself “went to stop him” when they heard what had happened, but they didn’t have time to get there. “We didn’t want to let it at all, and that’s where we went,” said “We will vigorously apply the hostel’s disciplinary regime,” he assured.
García Artiga has also said that in addition to applying the disciplinary regime, they have decided that the participants in the harassment of the students at the school next door must “write a public letter to the students and the management of the center apologizing”. “Thirdly, we thought about organizing some kind of conference series where professionals talk to them about this topic, to make them aware of how they should behave in a western democratic Spanish society. And fourthly, we have a lot of volunteer work here, but all those involved will volunteer to help the people or groups suffering in Madrid,” continued the director, in line with the statement published this Wednesday on their networks. At no point has he explicitly spoken about machismo .
The center’s director has also explained that it was common for school members to look out windows and make animal noises, which he assured them “also” followed. He has stated that this is “a way of expressing oneself, but doesn’t relate to girls at all”, in reference to the female college students.
The Complutense University, the largest in Spain, through its communications department, recalls that Elías Ahuja is not a separate school but is affiliated with the institution. That is, it is located within its university town – after signing a user contract and adopting basic rules of coexistence – but self-governing. The campus regrets the facts.
The law on university coexistence – the first in history, passed last February – seeks to raise awareness of gender equality and provides for expulsion from campus in cases of harassment. With hazing becoming less and less banned, but still taking place every September, tests with sexual overtones are not uncommon, such as going out into the street dressed as chickens with a sign that reads “hatched me.” Occasionally naturist auctions were organised; One, held in 2017 on the University of León campus, jumped into the media. The students paid to buy “slaves”, the novices, who after the sale took their notes, made photocopies or cleaned the house for them. The bidding ended with two girls in thongs and two completely naked boys.