The four graphs in this report make it clear that Madrid is in last place in terms of university funding in Spain, despite the fact that the Minister of Education, Emilio Viciana, assures that budgets are among “the highest in the European Union”. Madrid’s budget for universities does not represent 0.5% of the regional gross domestic product. Far from the central government’s national objective of reaching 1% in 2030, which would bring us closer to Europe (1.2%). The study data Spanish public universities. An autonomous perspective 2025of the Foundation for Knowledge and Development, correspond to the 2022/2023 academic year, but Madrid has not left the queue. Since then no serious effort has been made to lift the public universities out of ruin and this is why the university community of Madrid’s six public universities is called to strike on Wednesday and Thursday. Furthermore, the Madrid club is invited to participate in a demonstration on Thursday in the center of the capital.
“There will be no peace for those who suffocate us: class by class, department by department, faculty by faculty, we will build a strike that will make those who mistreat the right to a public university tremble”, warn in their manifesto the six convening platforms that bring together students, professors and the main unions. Their intention is to put pressure so that the increase in 2026 – 73.3 million, 6.5% more, lower than the increase in the community budget – is not a patch, but a path towards its recovery. In 2024, pressure from the rectors, campus boards of directors and the opposition in the Assembly forced the Madrid government to increase the sum by 47.3 million, including last-minute amendments. The budget will be voted on December 19th and there is plenty of time for Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s government to make changes.
Even Catalonia, whose universities lead the ranking, does not invest the necessary amount, but President Salvador Illa has committed to reaching 1% spending in 2030. His rectors complained in this newspaper 11 months ago about the situation of their Madrid counterparts: “It is a lack of scruples and respect for the public”.
Madrid’s universities would need 310 million more to reach the 2009 figures, discounting the inflation of those 15 years. In 2012, transfers collapsed with the crisis and continued to decline until 2014. Since then, they have increased every year, but the figure is still negative if inflation is discounted. The Polytechnic University of Madrid is above the national average when it comes to transfers because its courses are very experimental and require a lot of resources. But it still receives 3,300 euros less from its regional government than the Polytechnic University of Valencia per student.
In 2023, Madrid was the sixth region from bottom to worst finance its employees’ salaries. In Catalonia, which extended for years the partial contracts with which it covered losses during the recession, precariousness has caused even more disasters. The high cost of living in Madrid is starting to make itself felt: unable to make ends meet with a salary of just 1,400 euros, assistant professors are moving, if they find a job, to cheaper cities. Seven deans of the Complutense reported this exodus in EL PAÍS last Sunday.
Madrid is the community where students pay the most tuition, 454 euros more than the national average. Not to mention that in some communities, college students who pass don’t pay tuition for their next course, even if they don’t have a state scholarship. The measure has been applied for years in Andalusia and Extremadura, and is now also starting to be applied in Castilla-La Mancha and Asturias. During the mandate of Minister Manuel Castells, in 2020, it was agreed with the autonomous communities to lower public prices to 2012 levels, before assessment by José Ignacio Wert. Ayuso, dissatisfied, went to court not to lower rates, but ended up selling the measure as a goal for his next term.
The conveners also want to stop the elaboration of the Madrid law on higher education. “Lesuc presents itself as an imposition, disciplinary and dark,” assesses the platform in its manifesto. Subsequent drafts of the law involve the amendment of all rectors, who believe that its articles invade their autonomy and do not protect the social lift that the public university represents. The very high fines imposed on university students for lack of discipline also inflame the collective. For example, 15,000 euros for displaying a banner without authorization or 100,000 for participating in escraches. This Wednesday we will see the strength or otherwise of the organizers.
