liguel Vilan respo has een centrally nvolved in the nassive tudent truggles gainst war and cut-backs 1 education in Madrid. He poke at the Socialist lesistance forum "New truggles, new Iternatives" in London on October 25.
he student movement is not spontaneous, didn't come out of nothing. It was the consequence of any struggles before e.g. against privatition and protests against disasters like le one involving the cargo that sank in alicia. The militant student movement ith a clear anti-capitalist section itself influenced the growth of the antiwar movement.
When we led the students on the streets, we tried to convey the message this was not just a struggle against fees in this particular university, it was a struggle against the marketisation of education that is happening not just in Spain but across the
This allowed us to build very heterogenous, very diverse alliances that don't necessarily have ideological agreement. In the Spanish state, you don't have straight trade unions or students unions but assemblies linked to the faculties. There are no 'student unions as you know them.
We built an umbrella organisation encompassing assemblies from to several faculties in different universities. We tried to make sure that every student felt represented, that everyone could participate on an equal footing. That made it easier for us to co-ordinate the protests, the wave of demonstrations against the war.
Our strategy went well beyond just rejecting the war or the current regime as the social democrats wanted. We tried to make sure students looked at the factors that were behind this war. Our enemies were not just the government that was promoting this war but the economic interests that were involved.
Our struggle focussed on Anar's Partido Popular with a general strike on March 13 and a demonstration with 10,000. Afterwards we conveyed the message that we needed to stop the world when the war started.
The life of Madrid changed completely for three days when the war began. There was a general mood of confrontation. Life in Madrid was completely transformed -and students played an important part.
There were demonstrations in the main streets of Madrid that disrupted the traffic. The main motorways leading to Madrid were blockaded. The demonstrations concentrated around the area of Parliament, the headquarters of the Popular Party and the US and UK embassies. 100,000 students demonstrated that day. There was a strike in five state universities in Madrid. This was particularly strong and lasted longer in my university, Computensa de Madrid.
The following week, there were massive demonstrations in Barcelona, more than I million took part and in Madrid more than 800,000. Police injured more than 1,000
In the following week two more strikes were organised in several universities.
Groups of Barcelona and Madrid set up anti-war camps, taking over squares which became meeting places for the movement
Students from forty courses from different colleges took furniture into the street and organised alternative classes. Some teachers and other university staff joined in.
Bush is trying to lead us into a preventative war against humanity. Our task to build a preventative war against globalisation.
Let's join forces to oppose the attempt to apply market forces to universities through the General Agreement on Trade and Services and the World Trade Organisation. The European Social Forum in Paris needs to look at alternative ideas of university education. SR students