With banners, Palestinian flags and proclamations in defense of a “public and quality education” have received the students of the Pablo de Olavide University (UPO), in Seville, to the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, who has been responsible for presiding over the act of Opening of the academic year of Andalusian universities.
The UPO, the benjamine of the Andalusian public university system, has been the host of a ceremony marked by the contrast between the image of unity and institutional decorum that projected the academic courtship inside the Paraninfo, and the discomfort that students and members of CCOO manifested in their respective protests, held at the doors of the building where the solemn act of inauguration has developed.
While young people raised the voice abroad – “the public is not sold, defends itself” -, the Andalusian president advocated respecting the plurality and diversity of opinions, in the face of the “polarization” that permeates today’s society. At the beginning of his speech, the rector of the Pablo de Olavide, Francisco Oliva, reproached the attitude of the group of students, who tried to hinder the passage of the teaching staff at the entrance of the Paraninfo and rebuked the advisor to the university at the exit, motivating the intervention of the security personnel. “What I have seen out there does not correspond to the temple of reason and the word,” said Oliva, alluding to the values of the university institution.
A course full of joint challenges and commitments
The student platform Upoxlapublic -what He was born in March to support the pulse that the rectors then fought with the Board for “repeated breaches” in financing– He wanted to take advantage of the Andalusian president to claim improvements in the university system and remember that “studying is a right, not a privilege,” as the students shouted minutes before starting the act.
The rector of the UPO, and president of the Andalusian Public Universities Association (AUPA), also took advantage of Moreno’s presence to launch his own claims, but from a cordial and dialogue tone. After advancing that “there is a course full of challenges and challenges at the regional and national level,” Oliva stressed that the new university laws that are expected to be developed during the course “will not be able to meet their objective if they are not accompanied by sufficient budget development.”
At that point, the representative of the public universities addressed the Andalusian president – signed by his side – to highlight that “the financing is in the center” of the concerns of the rectors. “We had a good financing model, but during the past year there were some interpretive discrepancies, which were resolved in the Jaén Agreement signed in April, still pending to solve,” Oliva summarized, before adding that university financing “should not be conceived as an expense, but as an investment”, because it depends that the university remains “the social elevator par excellence” of society.
BUDGET INCREASE ANNOUNCE
In his speech, Francisco Oliva also appealed to the challenges that hold the central government with the public universities and those facing the UPO, such as “the progressive modernization of the academic offer.” On that path, he held out the administrations and proposed to continue advancing together on the way of dialogue to “write the tomorrow of those who are going to happen to us, thinking about them.” “Let’s make them proud of what we did,” concluded the rector of the UPO with his eyes fixed on the Andalusian president.
As a guest of honor, Moreno was responsible for closing the act with a speech in which he reaffirmed his “commitment to public universities” and recognized “institutional loyalty” and the ability to “dialogue” that the rectors have demonstrated in recent years, despite “all the avatars that public management has.” Likewise, the president of the Board showed the university policies that his government has deployed, highlighting measures such as the 5 % increase in the aid to the internationalization of university students (Erasmus+), the update of the degree map after 15 years with the frozen offer, the salary improvements for the staff and which defined as “the greatest budget in history” for Andalusian public universities.
“We are complying with all the agreements signed so far and we will continue to comply,” Moreno said, before announcing that in 2026 the Andalusian public universities will have 16 million additional euros, within a game aimed at implementing specific digitalization and sustainability actions, which will be included in the Andalusian budget next year.
Protests against the “abandonment of the public university”
In an act in which the representatives of private universities were also present, Moreno valued the role of higher education as guarantor of free thought and “safeguarding of equal opportunities.” “In this society where we walk towards bipolarity, where everything has to be white or black, fortunately there are nuances of many colors, such as the birretes of the doctors, and those nuances are those that show diversity, plurality and enormous wealth that a modern society has such as ours,” said the president.
Among the colored birretes, they also shone the colors of the Palestinian flag that one of the professors deployed during the act inside the Paraninfo. Out, the students cried against the privatization of the education system: “There can be no meritocracy or equal opportunities if there are students who run out of places in the public and have to study in the private one, when there are those who cannot afford to pay it,” said Sofía, spokesman for the Upoxlapublic Assembly. On behalf of his teammates, Sofia described as “unacceptable” that Moreno “comes to walk to our university as if nothing.”
“We wanted to welcome you with these banners, but it has entered through the back door,” the young woman lamented, alluding to the president avoided the main entrance of the campus, where the group of students concentrated in defense of the public university was waiting. Together with them, CCOO union delegates have also been manifested in the vicinity of the Paraninfo, with the aim of “visible our rejection of the abandonment policies of the public university by the Andalusian government”.
This was explained by the General Secretary of the Teaching Federation of CCOO of Andalusia, Marina Vega, during the protest act held Tuesday at the Sevillian campus. “We cannot allow a system to be deteriorated that guarantees access to higher education to thousands of Andalusian youth and Andalusians,” added the unionist, calling the university community, and the Andalusian society in general, to defend the public model of the University, “Strategic Pilar for the future of Andalusia and the only one that guarantees equal opportunities and social elevator.”
“While resources are cut and investments necessary for public universities are blocked, the Andalusian Government facilitates the growth of private universities, many of them without academic solvency, or the quality control required of the public system, which have been assigning degrees, relegating prestigious public universities, and putting the business of a few to the general interest of the citizen Official Opening.
The 2025-2026 course thus starts marked by a pulse between claim and dialogue, where the university community firmly claims that higher education remains a right of “quality for all”, Faced with the progress of private and budget limitations. The contrast between protest and decorum, between institutional demands and promises, is presented as the first image of an academic year that is expected intense and “transcendental” for the future of the Andalusian public university.
