On Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 November, workers, students and teachers of the six public universities in Madrid (Complutense, Rey Juan Carlos, Carlos III, Autónoma, Politécnica and Alcalá de Henares) are called to a general strike under the slogan “If there is no respite for public universities, there will be no peace for those who suffocate us”.
The strike is being called by the Coordinadora en defensa de las Universidades públicas en Madrid (Cupuma), for “a public university, free, critical and at the service of society” in the face of insufficient funding that threatens not only the future, but also the present of public university educational institutions.
The situation, worrying for all of them, has drawn special attention in the case of the Complutense -the largest on-site university in Spain-, when it was published a few weeks ago in El País that it can no longer pay its salaries unless it receives a loan.
However, in a press release issued by the UCM’s Vice-Rectorate for Communication, they wanted to emphasize that their situation is not unique, but is “part of a reality shared by Madrid’s public universities”.
As a prelude to the protests on November 26 and 27, from this Tuesday until November 21, the platform has announced that they will be holding talks and assemblies.
Why is the general strike being called?
From accounts on social networks such as Cupuma or the CGT Union of the Complutense have listed the reasons why the public universities of Madrid will go on strike, the same reasons why they encourage “the whole of Madrid society that believes in the public sector” to participate in it.
Firstly, because of the aforementioned underfunding to which they are being subjected: the Community of Madrid allocates less than 0.5% of GDP to public universities when the law requires that the investment be 1%.
Secondly, the protest denounces that this economic asphyxiation is aimed at the intervention of the public university: to privatize it and turn it into a business. Finally, they denounce that the draft of the Law on Higher Education, Universities and Science (known as LESUC) “cuts funding, autonomy and freedom of expression“.
According to an analysis of the same published by CGT-UCM in April 2025 -which you can consult in this link-, its objective “is to turn higher education into a market from which private entities can extract profits at the expense of the right to education”.
An indefinite strike will not be decreed.
The joint communiqué issued by Madrid universities does not rule out an indefinite strike: the aim is to achieve the largest possible mobilization before the budgets are approved in the Madrid Assembly at the end of the year, and to stop the processing of the LESUC.
Madrid’s universities -and particularly its student body- have recently been the protagonists of important social mobilizations, such as the encampments last summer in defense of the Palestinian people.