Vito Quiles plays his most awaited show in front of a bunkered Complutense | Instruction

The agitator Vito Quiles failed in his aim to found a great one show at Complutense University. His followers weren’t even 200 at the event he called this afternoon at the Complutense University of Madrid. The police isolated them in a roundabout 100 meters from the only open entrance to the Somosaguas campus, so they could not access the campus. His detractors, more numerous, but not in great numbers, chanted against him from the other side of the barricade. Quiles underlined, referring to the University: “It is a source of infections. They are a dunghill.”

Quiles always says that public universities are a bunker and this time it is so. Nine police vans surrounded Quiles as he harangued his followers, very young, mostly men. A large group sang the face the sun. To minimize the risks associated with Quiles’ visit, given the precedents that have occurred in other universities, the rector announced this morning that only one of the four entrance doors to the campus will remain open. In it, a security check would have prevented entry to anyone not accredited as a student, but there are those who sneak in with a friend. Seven police vans were located at that access alone. The UCM did not take the radical decision of the University of Navarra to suspend classes.

Rubén, from Madrid, and a Galician friend managed to get in and it is the first time they have come to Somosaguas. They used a borrowed card. They come to visit Quiles. Their archetype of classic and elegant clothing makes them noticeable from afar. They don’t care if they are searched because they only bring coffee and biscuits, they say. They are “sad” that people study on campus. They will see the view, they say. If they are not convinced they will go shopping and if tension increases they will order an Uber to Pozuelo, they explained.

Isabela, who studies a master’s degree in gender equality, Carol, Luisa and Zaynet, who study Social Work, are outraged by everything that has happened. They believe that the solution should not be to isolate the University. There is no place to park, the buses are overcrowded and at the M-40 interchange there are many students stuck in traffic. Classes have not been suspended, but now they have to make a huge journey to get to class.

The Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) is the eighth that Vito Quiles has attended tourswho called Combative Spain. Its subtitle, Critical journalism and political communication However, it does not answer the reason for your visit. It’s a show of masses without any academic rigor, argument or proposal, praised by the followers of this far-right agitator and contested by his detractors. His intention, says Quiles, is not “political”, but “to get closer to people and talk to universities” where, in his opinion, “it is very difficult to disagree”.

Who covers the costs of this tour is an enigma. In an interview broadcast six days ago on the channel of far-right YouTuber David Santos, Quiles explained that he does not have parties or foundations behind him – which manage public money that must be controlled – but rather businessmen in a personal capacity. And he mentioned law firms, some associations in the legal sector and even some in the automotive sector. Quiles, estranged from Alvise Pérez – he was his press chief and ran for the European Parliament for The party is finished – after his judicial accusations, is now very close to Vox, the PP of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the Atenea Foundation, of the former far-right politician Iván Espinosa de los Monteros.

Complutense recalled on social networks on Tuesday that the event could not take place: “There is no request registered through the official channels”. His first intention was to visit the UCM on November 3, but he chose to cancel the tour after the serious riots in Pamplona, ​​where the police ended up charging far-left protesters, two were arrested and a journalist was injured.

The Complutense is not just another one. There he studied a degree in Journalism (2019-2022) and the rectorate does not confirm whether he graduated: “This is personal information.” There are photos of him with his graduation sash, although there is speculation online that he has some credits left to finish. “Quiles, fascist, you are not a journalist!” or “Vito, man, finish the race!”, the detractors shouted.

The Somosaguas campus also has enormous symbolic value. It was built by the dictator Francisco Franco 13 kilometers from the center to isolate the faculties with the most combative university students, coming from Economics, Political Science or Psychology.

Political Science of Somosaguas is, specifically, the bête noire. It hosts numerous debates, but its deanery is also very accustomed to calling the police in anticipation of riots, as happened this February with the act of former Vox spokesperson Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, suspended for security reasons. Former Podemos leaders Juan Carlos Monedero, as full professor, Pablo Iglesias, substitute teacher, and Carolina Bescansa, collaborator of an institute, teach in its classrooms.

Quiles found a very different landscape this Tuesday at the gates of CEU San Pablo in Madrid. He entered amid insults to the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, and shouting “long live Spain”. While they asked him for photographs, 300 other students were waiting for him in the main hall. It is the first private university he attended and the only one that gave him permission to access its facilities in the midst of it tours.

It was the students of Proyecto Abantos, who call themselves “the largest apolitical university community in Spain”, who applied to host the event. But paradoxically politics was at the center of a conversation in which the lawyer Juan Gonzalo Ospina also participated. Upon arrival, sitting in his seat, he joked: “No, not in the center. Leave me on the right, damn it.” The audience burst into laughter.

Then he checked that his microphone was working. “What technology do you have here? Since I come from the Complutense, where hot water hasn’t arrived yet,” he continued to denounce public universities. “They are exclusive,” he blurted out before referring to the Somosaguas campus. “It’s a political bunker,” he attacked.

“I think it is very positive that more and more young people are informed through unconventional means”, he expressed referring to social networks before addressing the housing problem in Spain with other topics such as “radical feminism, the gender lobby, the LGTBI movements that go to demonstrate in Palestine and if they go there they will cut off their heads”. He called all this “ideological rubbish”.

But Quiles didn’t know how exactly to answer the host’s final question: what is the purpose of the tours? This is how the ballot was resolved: “Even the tour does not have a specific purpose, in the sense of… I believe that the only objective is to be able, in some way, to get closer to young people, to convey some ideas that I believe more and more people share, legitimate and positive, towards young people, especially towards the most patriotic.”

He openly admits that he wants to emulate Charlie Kirk, even though he admits that he has neither his oratory nor his intellectual level.