There is no peace in the student dormitories in Madrid.

"Get the chauvinists out of the university" and "We will burn down the Elías Ahuja home," protesters chanted on Monday in front of the Spanish capital's Complutense University.

The letter of apology that the students published the day before is not enough for them.

"What was a bad joke has gotten out of hand," the residents of the Elías Ahuja home wrote to the students in the Santa Monica dorm across the street.

They had previously tried to justify what has been outraged all over Spain for days as a “student tradition”.

Hans Christian Roessler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb based in Madrid.

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A video clip, a good one minute long, had spread rapidly across social networks in the past week and was viewed by hundreds of thousands.

It shows a student shouting from a window towards the women's dorm at midnight: "Sluts, come out of your holes like rabbits, you nymphomaniac whores", which the men should deal with accordingly.

Then the other blinds opened and about 100 students started animal sounds.

Not just an insult, a way of life

Students have been reporting similar sexist and often degrading rituals for years.

Residents of the Santa Monica dormitory told Spanish media they knew the men were planning something that night.

One of them was quoted as saying that her neighbors had "no bad intentions", while others complained that things had gotten much worse in recent years.

But it was the insults in the short film that caused an unprecedented political echo.

At the EU summit in Prague, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described the sexist attacks as “absolutely disgusting”;

such behavior could not be tolerated.

With the exception of the right-wing populists from Vox, all parties condemned the behavior of the students.

Interior Secretary Fernando Grande-Marlaska said he didn't believe the students' "apologies" because there was a way of life behind them.

It is sad that after 40 years of democracy and equality policy there is still so much to do.

A student has been expelled from the dormitory, the university has started an investigation.

In the letter, the young men promise to attend courses on respect, tolerance and sexual aggression.

The public prosecutor's office announced that they would investigate a possible "hate crime".

The sexual criminal law, which was only tightened in August, has not yet been applied because it only came into force a few days after the incident.

“Only a yes is a yes” is the core sentence of the law, which also criminalizes verbal sexist attacks.

The Spanish left-wing government is thus pushing ahead with its feminist politics, for which there is still a lot to do: A study has shown that one in five young men considers gender-based violence to be an "ideological invention".