Trump administration cuts funding to Barcelona library over DEI policies
At a free technology workshop on basic circuitry in Barcelona, Spain, teacher David Prieto broke out a box of simple components: LED light strips, transformers and switches.
Two ninth graders had already built something. “We made a working stoplight, in miniature,” Carla Fernandez, one of the students, said. “When the walklight turns green, the stoplight turns red, and vice versa.”
This session at the Sant Andreu de Palomar public library is part of Barcelona’s American Space program, which tries, among other things, to attract girls and young women to technology, according to library director Gemma Domingo, since high-tech tends to be a bastion for boys.
But programs like this one, which also include English-language classes and workshops on how to study in the US, have been in danger of disappearing.
Since coming into office, US President Donald Trump has made it a priority to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, not only across the United States, but also overseas. The White House put this program and other private companies on notice, and warned businesses working with US embassies and consulates to renounce their inclusion policies. But many of these groups are resisting and fighting back.
The American Space program has about 150 chapters around the world.
“It’s about sharing American culture and language,” Domingo said. “But also helping prepare young people for jobs, especially in technology. The whole idea [is] of inclusiveness, and equality, looking out for the most vulnerable.”
The Trump administration targeted the program in March, sending a letter through the US embassy in Madrid, threatening to pull funding.
“Trump’s executive order, first of all, is directed at a public library,” Barcelona Mayor Jaume Collboni said. “We have responded that we have no intention whatsoever of abandoning our DEI programs.”
The US made good on its ultimatum, and after eight years of cooperation, it severed ties with the program.
The city of Barcelona ended up stepping in to fill the $20,000 a year funding gap. But director Domingo said that, even with the money, one part of the program could still disappear.
“We’ve been offering free workshops on how to study in the US,” she explained, “from scholarships to the permissions you need, visas and so on.”
Now she worries that they may no longer be worth it since the Trump administration is also trying to ban foreign students from studying at American colleges and universities, even though judges have so far blocked these efforts.
Carla Lopez, one of the other students at the library workshop, said she still wants to try doing an online American high school diploma program.
Her partner in the stoplight project, Fernandez, added that she thinks Trump is making a mistake, “because the more people who can learn and study technology, the better it is for scientific progress.”
