The “acampada” began on Monday, when around three hundred people moved to occupy the university and pitch tents: in the hall next to the tents, Marc, student and activist for Palestine, talks about the mobilization.
How is the mobilization progressing and what results is it achieving?
The first night around forty people have already stopped to sleep, which became eighty yesterday, the second day of mobilisation, in the assemblies we are counting on the presence of more than 100 people, which means that there is an appeal to which the the local university community is responding collectively. And today is a very special day because at the UB a motion was discussed and voted on to approve the severance of relations with the state of Israel. We won with a clear majority, so we celebrate this victory which is the end of a long process. But now we tell ourselves that we must move forward, we must make this “claustrum” effective and, at the same time, make the institutions that are above the university responsible, such as the Spanish Government and the Generalitat de Catalunya, and demand from them the severance of relations .”
Does this mean that the University of Barcelona must now terminate its existing agreements with the University of Israel?
Now the Governing Council, which is the executive body of the university, has the mandate of the cloister to make this request effective. Since it is a clearly democratic mandate (because the claustro is the most democratic body) they will have no other option than to make it effective. We believe it is a matter of days for the agreements with the state of Israel to be broken and, therefore, to help put an end to complicity in the genocide.
Are you afraid that they might vacate this “acampada”?
At the moment we have not received any warning and there has been no conflict either with the university security service or with the police, therefore we do not foresee complicated situations. It is true that Sunday is election day here in Catalonia and this building is one of the electoral colleges. We have reiterated that this is a completely democratic, peaceful and legitimate protest and we have no intention of interfering in the electoral process. However, being a building with a large space, it offers the possibility of coexistence between the vote and this protest and there should be no problem or notice of eviction. If there is, we will respond by appealing to society to defend this protest which, I repeat, is legitimate and does not intend in any way to interfere with the electoral process.
The document approved by the University of Barcelona.
