The Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, has defended the University of Salamanca as an "international educational benchmark", after the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, described it in a speech in the United States as a "machine of censorship and indoctrination.
"The attacks by Vox, government partners of the PP in Castilla y León, against the University of Salamanca are intolerable. The University of Salamanca is an international educational benchmark that deserves respect. My full support to its rector and the university community," he said. wrote the socialist minister in her X account.
In recent hours, Vox has redoubled its leader's attack on the academic institution, with a message on that social network addressed to the rector that says: "You have decorated a collaborator of drug traffickers who demonizes the history of Spain. In your university there are 'masters' to study invented genres and you spread the totalitarian 'woke' doctrine as if it were science."
This text is accompanied by a video of the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, who was awarded the medal of the University of Salamanca in May 2023, the highest recognition that the university has also granted to other leaders of countries with which the institution maintains close collaboration.
"Santiago Abascal praised the history of the University of Salamanca, which is far above your decadent rectorate and ideology," ends the Vox message in X, addressed to the rector, Ricardo Rivero.
"The old universities, such as Salamanca, Bologna or Harvard, designed to enlarge culture, have today been converted into machines of censorship, coercion, indoctrination and anti-Semitism," Abascal said in a speech at the Action Conference Conservative Policy (CPAC), which brought together figures from the American and international right and extreme right at the National Harbor in Maryland.
Abascal's statements had an immediate response from the University of Salamanca, with an unusual statement from the rector, Ricardo Rivero, who considers that "whoever insults our University through the lack of information, in the end, shows little appreciation for the image." international of Spain".
"These demonstrations, furthermore, demonstrate an irresponsible ignorance about the institutional life of a house of studies where the most diverse opinions and points of view are expressed every day respecting the principles of respect for people, democracy, pluralism and defense of the Constitution," the note adds.
The mayor of Salamanca, Carlos García Carbayo, has stated in a speech on the occasion of his visit to the works in the atrium of the city's Cathedral that the statements by the president of Vox about the University of Salamanca "are absurd, they are incomprehensible, "They have nothing to do with history, tradition and the day-to-day life of the academic institution."
"I don't know for what purpose they are done, if with the purpose of disturbing, if with the purpose of occupying space in the media. Of course, if this was the purpose, occupying space in the media, it has achieved it by one hundred percent, but it seems to me a very regrettable way to go out to public opinion," the mayor continued.
That position of Abascal, he added, "does not make any sense, it harms the University of Salamanca and it harms the city of Salamanca, because few cities like Salamanca have that symbiosis, that unity with their university."
"So it's not just that we regret it, it's that we reject it outright," the municipal councilor pointed out in a meeting with the media. The councilor had already spoken out about the controversy in his X account, defending the history and future of the historic educational center.
