Will Spain finally evacuate its students from Gaza?

"I want to worry about an exam instead of whether there will be a tomorrow. I want to sit in a library and hear the quiet sound of people turning pages. I want to have a future that does not depend on whether a phone rings.

Instead, I'm still in Gaza. Still waiting. Still trapped between an acceptance letter and a departure date that is listed as: Unknown."

Hour by hour Lama*, a humanities student in Gaza, is watching her chance of a new life slip away.

She is one of 40 to 60 students in Gaza with places, including scholarships, at Spanish universities but who cannot evacuate their devastated region.

This summer, the situation became embarrassing for the Spanish government. Media articles highlighted the crisis. The Gazan students themselves started a petition to beg the government to unblock the corridors. They pointed out that their numbers were few. The logistics could not be that challenging.

To date, Spain has evacuated just 19 students since October 2023. This is in comparison with Italy, which evacuated nearly 270 students from Gaza. The United Kingdom, meanwhile, has facilitated the academic safe passage of 147, including students' family members.

Evacuating from Gaza is taxing no matter the destination. Before embarking on an arduous journey - usually through Israel and Jordan, often with just a few days’ notice and no more than a backpack - students must supply a host of documents such as passports, university admission letters, health insurance and financial guarantees.

Yet even when documentation was correct and Spain-based guarantors ensured students would not burden the country's public coffers, Spanish visa applications lay unprocessed in the country's Jerusalem consulate.

Agonising silence

Spain's cohorts are by no means the only students in Gaza to find themselves with guaranteed university places in Europe but no evacuation route.

What makes the Spanish situation especially frustrating is the lack of explanation. Both the Spanish consulate and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs - which supervise student evacuations - have not released information about the hold-up.

This silence has lent a particular sting to the students' agony.

"Opacity, condescension, arbitrariness and a lack of empathy and humanity bordering on cruelty" because "uncertainty tortures the students even more than they already are," is how the situation was described to Madrid newspaper El Diario by David Peñafuerte, a member of the RUxP (RED Universitaria for Palestina), a group of university staff from 43 Spanish universities who have pledged to support Palestine.

My questions to the Spanish consulate in Jerusalem went unanswered.

My request for information from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs elicited a generic statement - similar to that sent to El Diario - in which the ministry drew attention to the Spanish government's condemnation of Israel's behaviour, expressed itself as "not indifferent" to Gazan suffering and promised they were working to alleviate it through diplomatic channels.

Highlighting the €150 million the Spanish government allocated for humanitarian assistance to Gaza in 2026, the ministry drew attention to evacuations that had already occurred, mostly for medical reasons.

Such vagueness is no consolation to the stranded students. Some have lost their places entirely. Others have missed whole academic years.

Each visa application is punitively expensive for Gazans. One student stopped buying her medical treatment in order to cover her costs. Trapped in the twilight between old and new lives, she is struggling with suicidal thoughts.

In the face of ongoing scholasticide

The Spanish universities are not to blame for the crisis. Both the students and the Spanish organisations who support them, such as RUxP and Gaza 40 + – an international body devoted to student evacuations – testify that the academic institutions have created the necessary pathways once political documentation and permissions are in place.

Other Spanish ministries have successfully evacuated Gazans. Since 2024, medical evacuations have brought a total of 236 people, including patients' family members, to Spain thanks to the combined efforts of the Ministries of Health, Inclusion, Social Security and Defence.

Still, exhausted by uncertainty, some students have renounced their places. For a people for whom education is so precious, such choices are excruciating.

Palestine has an adult literacy rate of nearly 98%. The country's passion for learning saw over 28,000 Gazan students graduate high school this summer, having spent nearly three years battling through rubble-strewn streets, often studying in tents and writing on old papers and even food aid boxes because of paper shortages.

The Spanish Foreign Ministry's neglect of the Gazan students is particularly baffling given the government's steadfast defence of Palestine.

One of the first major European powers to recognise Palestinian statehood, left-wing premier Pedro Sanchez has pursued an agenda - via his commitment to international law and willingness to cancel trade and military links - that is potentially transformative for EU relations with Israel.

Israel, though it propagates a lie that Palestinians are "barbarians", is fully aware of the threat to Zionism posed by Palestine's superlative culture. That fear has provoked a scholasticide. Every university in Gaza has been struck by the Israeli military, making the opportunity to study abroad even more valuable.

It is possible that Netanyahu's regime, which must approve all evacuations, is singling out the students with Spanish offers for particular punishment because its terror of the highly educated nature of the Palestinian population is compounded by anger with Sanchez for his robust critique.

If this is the case, why has the Spanish Foreign Ministry not admitted that Israeli intransigence is causing the problem?

Nevertheless, media attention and the students' own efforts, such as the petition, may be having an effect. Sources say that a student evacuation might take place later this month.

But hopes have been raised and dashed before. Until those evacuation plans become concrete, the Gazan students remain on their rollercoaster of despair and expectation. Furthermore, the criteria for processing some visas, and not others, remain a mystery, making it impossible for students left behind to improve their chances.

As Lama navigates survival in Gaza, messages arrive from her Spanish university with details of courses including lectures, reading lists and extra-curricular student activities.

"I remember crying while reading some of those emails…[n]ot because I didn't want to see them, but because I wanted so badly to be there."

*Lama is a pseudonym used to protect the student’s identity.

Rachel Spence is a journalist and poet based in the UK and Italy. Her writing has appeared in The Wire, Red Pepper, the Financial Times, Hyperallergic, Ytali.com and The Art Newspaper. Her non-fiction book Battle for the Museum (Hurst 2024) was an FT Book of the Year. Her latest poetry collection is Daughter of the Sun (The Emma Press, 2025), which was highly commended in the Forward Prizes 2026.

Follow Rachel on Instagram: @rachelwords

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