By David Latona
MADRID (Reuters) – A Spanish university dormitory said on Thursday it had expelled several male students caught on video yelling vulgar threats at a female residence across the street that went viral on social media, sparking widespread national outrage.
In the footage, which Reuters has not been able to verify, one person first shouts from a window of Madrid’s Elias Ahuja residence at the nearby Santa Monica all-girls dorm.
“Whores, come out of your holes like rabbits, you are fucking nymphomaniacs,” he says, also threatening to make the women submit at a “capea” – an outdoor party and amateur bullfight usually involving heavy alcohol consumption.
Then, the video shows, dozens of the instigator’s fellow residents turn lights on and open shutters to also shout and chant in a highly intimidating scene.
“We cannot tolerate such behaviour that generates hatred and attacks women,” tweeted Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. “It is especially painful to see that the protagonists are young people … Enough of machismo!”
‘UNACCEPTABLE AND INEXPLICABLE’
Elias Ahuja is one of several private residences attached to the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), Spain’s biggest state university. Residents pay nearly 1,200 euros ($1,187) a month for room and board.
The university said it was opening an investigation and would liaise with other colleges to discipline those involved.
“We radically condemn these statements, they are unacceptable and inexplicable,” the director of the residence, Manuel Garcia Artiga, told local radio station Cadena SER of the incident that occurred on Sunday evening.
A spokesperson for the residence told state news agency Efe that several perpetrators had been identified and expelled, with others to follow. So far, no names have been made public.
Equality Minister Irene Montero said it was crucial for young people to learn about the importance of consent and stop reinforcing a “culture of rape and sexual terror.”
Spain recently enacted harsher penalties for such abusive language or behaviour, qualifying all non-consensual sex as rape. That came after the so-called “Wolf Pack” case which gave momentum to women’s rights demands.
In 2018, five men referring to themselves as a “Wolf Pack” were jailed for the lesser crime of sexual abuse after gang-raping a young woman at the Pamplona bull-running festival.
($1 = 1.0113 euros)
(Reporting by David Latona; Editing by Aislinn Laing and Andrew Cawthorne)
