The University of Salamanca (Universidad de Salamanca), founded in 1218, is one of the oldest universities in the world and Spain’s foremost public research institution, enrolling over 30,000 students across four campuses with 72 undergraduate and 86 official master’s programs. In October 2017, the Chinese Embassy in Spain sent an urgent email to the university’s president and dean demanding cancellation of its inaugural “Taiwan Cultural Days” — warning the event “would affect the university’s good relations with China” — and the university complied the same day, deleting all mention of the event from its website and social media. The incident, which only became public knowledge in August 2018 after a lecturer went public with the embassy’s email, drew widespread condemnation as an instance of Beijing pressuring European academic institutions. In May 2025, the university and Guizhou University (貴州大學) jointly established a Confucius Institute (孔子學院) — institutions that have faced sustained criticism over academic freedom — which a Guizhou University representative described as “advancing the Belt and Road Initiative” (推進一帶一路倡議).