For the median worker in a small town in Spain, an entire life savings of scrimping and saving could still be only a fraction of what it would take to build one lecture hall. Might not even pay for a single year of salaries, operations, and expenses.
Put a million Euros into an endowment, and at 5% annual returns, that's 50,000 Euros, enough to hire maybe one person to run and teach everything. Even if it was 10 million Euros, that's a lot less than you think if you want to start even a small school and not run out of money in a few years.
It depends on how rich the old lady was. In my hometown (Cáceres, also in Spain) an old rich lady left a whole palace to the city, which is now a museum, and a lot of money to start a cultural foundation.
You call this a rumor at the top of your comment. It’s all hearsay and you can’t really criticize people for assuming something different than you assume. There’s no factual information here to discuss.
Put a million Euros into an endowment, and at 5% annual returns, that's 50,000 Euros, enough to hire maybe one person to run and teach everything. Even if it was 10 million Euros, that's a lot less than you think if you want to start even a small school and not run out of money in a few years.