has been centrally involved in the massive student struggles against war and cut-backs in education in Madrid. "For the 2 weeks before the war started there were over 200 initiatives such as demonstrations and other activities against the war in different faculties of our college. Outside in the workplaces there was also a general strike before the war.
When war started 4 marches took place, collapsing the centre of the city, with over 100,000 people involved. For us the antiwar movement is a continuation of struggle, not the beginning.
Over the last 5 years there has been growing struggle in Europe against cuts in education expenditure and especially against the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS), which looks to turn universities into centres for business and finance. Under GATS, universities become markets - and education is no longer seen as a universal right. In Spain, the first big struggle was against the marketisation of universities - not against a specific law but against the model of a university that was being imposed. For me and the other protesting students the struggle is clearly an anti-globalisation struggle.
The university I study at in Madrid is the largest in the Spanish state, with over 180,000 students. Our network is very flexible and co-ordinates organisations and student unions through assemblies that work. at a city level between all these mobilisations.
The assemblies don't just work against a specific law or government policy. They build links with struggles in society, for example workers' strikes. They work with anti-globalisation struggles, the struggles of illegal immigrants, general strikes and the squatters movement. They also organise debates and seminars that critique capitalist society and neo-liberal agendas. In my association there are 40 activist organisations. Political plurality is crucial to the development of the assemblies.
We have occupied our university against the leadership of the faculty. This has lasted for a year and is still going in.
Political analysis is very important, and is taken seriously, so this year my faculty has political priorities as well as the activity, where we have an analysis of war and imperialism, education and the casualisation of work among young people.
There are going to be struggles in the coming years - the implementation of GATS will take about 10 years. In Madrid we will try to use the forces we built up in previous struggles to build a solid structure for future mobilisations. We will look at the
LE DADO) possiblility of joint structures - with students, teachers and workers.
We see international struggle as key. It is vital to organise at the European and international level, building the global anti-capitalist movement. It is vital to have students inside the framework of the 2nd ESF in Paris in November and work for massive mobilisations for the rights of students on a European scale - along the lines of the antiwar mobilisations on 15 February this year."