Spanish PM leads outcry over “repugnant” student chants

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has condemned a group of male university students in Madrid who were filmed chanting misogynistic abuse at their female counterparts.

Pedro Sanchez criticised the “macho, inexplicable, unjustified and absolutely repugnant behaviour” of the students at Complutense University.

Several of the students have been expelled, and Spanish prosecutors are investigating whether a hate crime has been committed.

In footage taken on the night of 2 October, students in an all-male building shouted at female students in the block opposite.

One student shouted: “Whores, come out of your holes, bunnies. You are a load of nymphomaniac whores.”

The student also threatened to make women submit sexually at a Capea, an outdoor party and amateur bullfight that usually involves heavy alcohol consumption.

Fellow students in the Colegio Mayor Elías Ahuja building then opened their blinds, shouting and making animal noises.

The video was condemned from across the political spectrum after it was shared on TikTok.

Mr Sánchez said: “We should not give any excuse for these behaviours which surely don’t represent the general feeling of Spanish society.

“I think it’s important that all political parties and the media express a clear ‘no’ to these macho behaviours, and do not give a take a single step back on real equality between men and women.”

The leader of the conservative opposition Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, called for society “to finish with these intolerable sexist attitudes”.

Spain’s equality minister, Irene Montero, said the episode was “the clearest proof” of the need for education on sexual consent: “That way all the boys and girls and teenagers in our country will learn that treating people right is right, and that treating them wrong is wrong.

“That way they’ll learn about the culture of consent so that we can stop reinforcing the culture of rape and sexual terror that makes women into sexual objects.”

On Monday 10 October, the country’s largest student union announced a protest on the main campus at Complutense University and demanded the expulsion of all those involved in the “disgusting and sexist” footage.

Some residents in the Santa Mónica accommodation shared an open letter that accepted the subsequent apologies of students who participated in making the noises. It read: “A viral video is easy to misinterpret without understanding its context. An impression of hatred and machismo has been created, which could not be further from the truth.”

However, the director of the hall, Manuel García Artiga, said the sentiments expressed in the video “go totally against the values of the hall and are unacceptable and inexplicable”.

He said that he had arrived too late to stop the chanting, but noted that he would apply the “full force of the hall’s disciplinary rules”.

The authorities met on Monday to discuss expelling the alleged ringleader, adding that he would first be given an opportunity to explain himself.

It was later announced that a number of students have been expelled, and the others in the viral video have been identified, although it has provided no further details.