Hundreds of students take to the streets calling for Valencian president to resign

Catalan students went on strike on Tuesday to urge Valencian president Carlos Mazón to resign over his handling of the floods. Around 500 students took to the streets in Barcelona's city center on Tuesday midday to protest also against Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez.

The Catalan Countries Students Union (SEPC for its acronym in Catalan) has also organized several demonstrations in different cities across the so-called 'Catalan Countries,' which include Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and Valencia.

At midday, students in Barcelona gathered at the Plaça Universitat, as well as in Girona, Tarragona, Manresa, Vilafranca, Valencia, and Palma de Mallorca.

Those in the Catalan capital walked down to the Plaça Sant Jaume, where the government's headquarters and the city council offices are located.

During the demonstration, they shouted 'Mazón dimissió,' among other chants, and held posters related to the DANA storm, an acronym in Spanish that stands for “depresión aislada en niveles altos,” – high-altitude isolated depression. Others showed support for the victims of the floods in Valencia or highlighted the 'País Valencià, Països Catalans' relation.

Students took to the streets also to chant that victims "did not die, but were murdered."

"It is completely unbearable how days go on and nothing is happening," Paula Leiva, spokesperson for the Students' Union, told media outlets before the demonstration began. 

For Leiva, the "criminal" government led by Mazón should all step down, and also criticized those businesspeople who "endangered their workers' life," she added.

While most of the chants have been against Mazón, students also raised their voices against Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez and his cabinet as "the institutional abandonment shows, once again, that civilians are only saved by civilians, as the State abandons us," Leiva said.

The message was shared by SEPC spokesperson Tània Ros, who said that all these politicians should be tried for "criminal acts."

"This has not been a natural disaster, nor an exceptional event, but rather a consequence of so many years of neoliberal politics that murder the Earth in favor of massive tourism and large construction projects," Ros said.

To pay for the required reconstruction, the SEPC spokesperson recommends taxing all large corporations and the richest people in Spain and expropriating tourist apartments and empty apartments to offer them to those affected.

Demonstrations across Catalonia

Aside from Barcelona, many students demonstrated in cities such as Girona or Tarragona.

In the northern city of Girona, around 100 people gathered at the Plaça de Josep Pla also asking for Mazón to step down. Just in front of the People's Party headquarters in the northern city, as Mazón leads the PP in Valencia.

During the protest, the human towers 'colla' of Xoriguers from the University of Girona, build a human tower, or castell. They are calling for those affected to be placed in tourist apartments and empty houses, while Arran, the youngster group of the far-left anti-capìtalist CUP political party said that conservative governments are "whitewashing climate change," and the storm was a sign of the "Earth being at its limit."