Spain no longer has a ministry of science. In the last days of 2011, its new government transferred national science policy to the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, a duty for which this ministry seems most unsuited. Science was an unwelcome addition that absorbed more than half of the €1,083-million (US$1,438-million) budget cut imposed on the ministry. This sends an alarming signal of the sacrifices that science may face when the government releases its budget for 2012 next month.
This is the first time that neither 'science' nor 'research' have featured in the name of any top Spanish government department. It is not just a symbolic shift: it continues our country's trend of deliberately undermining and playing down the importance of science.
The official line is clear: science is not a priority in Spain. Of course, we are immersed in an economic crisis and austerity measures are needed. However, the government's irrational and draconian actions will cause long-term damage to the scientific infrastructure and send contradictory messages to other countries and investors. Although its rhetoric promises a shift to a knowledge-based economy, every step it takes is in the opposite direction. The results will be a borrowed-knowledge economy with little domestic know-how.
The problems did not start with the new government: the previous administration attempted to pass a Kafkaesque by-law for public universities that would have created a merit-evaluation system that diminished the weight assigned to research and technology transfer. The by-law stated that trade unions would negotiate the criteria for faculty promotion, making academic careers “more predictable and more egalitarian”. It would have been the death of meritocracy. The same by-law would also have ballooned bureaucracy to such a level that it would have threatened to swamp any university administration.
The previous government also opposed attempts to create a genuine tenure-track system for researchers in universities and national laboratories, on the grounds that tenure track is unconstitutional because access to civil service should be “egalitarian” so tenured jobs should not be targeted to tenure-track researchers. This is a consequence of the narrow-minded thought that all researchers in the public sector should be civil servants, but civil service is unsuited to research activities.
Spain likes to boast that it has an equivalent to tenure track: the Ramón y Cajal programme. Launched in 2001, this is the only nationwide programme that has managed to attract and retain highly qualified researchers from Spain and abroad. However, drastic cuts in hiring over the past three years and a hiring freeze announced this year will kill this first attempt at a tenure-track programme. The prospects are so grim that despite being eager to return to Spain, some of my Spanish colleagues in the United States are rejecting Ramón y Cajal positions.
“The government's irrational and draconian actions will cause long-term Damage to the scientific infrastructure.”
The hiring freeze is suicidal. Researchers who retire will no longer be replaced. Unlike many of its neighbours, Spain has a very limited science and technology industry in which to absorb highly qualified workers, so scientists aged 20–40 years will have no choice but to leave if they want to further their career. The country will therefore face a multigenerational brain drain, with corresponding losses in innovation, inspiration and credibility. The damage from this decision will take decades to reverse.
The new government is now effectively trampling on the best hope that Spanish researchers had for the future. Legislation in the pipeline could have improved the situation, but the government has, abruptly and without explanation, closed the two political science commissions — one in the Senate and one in the Congress — that would have been responsible for steering through this legislation.
The legislation includes moves to allow universities and research centres to be funded privately, to develop a new science and technology strategy and to create a proper national research agency with a multi-year budget. We urgently need such a system in Spain, where severe and unpredictable fluctuations in year-to-year funding make medium- to long-term planning impossible. The strategy is crucial if Spain is to coordinate its increasingly anarchic 18 sets of science policies — laid out simultaneously by the 17 regional governments and the central government — and to introduce a smarter, top-down, approach to tackling national problems.
Spain must bring its science and technology investment (currently 1.39% of gross domestic product) in line with European standards (2%) and closer to the 3% goal set by the European Council Lisbon Strategy for 2010. It also needs a science council, similar to the German Wissenschaftsrat, constituted mainly of scientists who have been elected by the scientific community to take the lead in delivering the national science and technology strategy.
Spain's situation is summed up by a poster for a recent Hollywood blockbuster: “No plan. No backup. No choice. Mission: Impossible. Ghost Protocol.” Spanish science cannot afford ghost protocols. Without the proposed strategy there is no plan, and without a well-funded and non-political national research funding agency, there is no backup. The results leave research in Spain with a mission impossible.
- Journal name:
- Nature
- Volume:
- 482,
- Pages:
- 277
- Date published:
- ()
- DOI:
- doi:10.1038/482277a
I just think that the responsibility of science policy has passed from one ministry to another over successive governments no fewer three times in the last ten years alone is very telling of the little regard that Spain's political establishment has for science and its impact, in spite of repeated pledges to the contrary.
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Dismal as the prospect for science research is in Spain, the picture is equally – if not more – soul destroying for the humanities. I recommend the film "La lengua de las mariposas" for anyone who wants to understand what happened to Spanish education over the past century, and the entrenched and poisonous politicization of teaching/learning.
España needs change, it is true, but The struggles in España are massive!. Perhaps Canada once is a good model for country without "scientific body". I agree that España does not need to throw away a lot of money to the scientist. Instead, the scientist have to prove that they can "stand-alone", independent. Scientist have to control the country. So, "el cambio" has arrived, together let's help the mother of Spain has a nice metamorphosis in science.
In the times of bubble economy the budget was wasted in a totally irrational way, stimulating the non-necessary spending and allowing programs that are clearly not viable, without any foresight of the demography, the demand and the supply of the academic and scientific services. Now there would be cuts, but they will once again correspond to the political interests of the governance and not to the interest of the country.
The current government is nothing more than very obedient to the "European" interests government. It seems that no other type of government is allowed nowadays in Europe. When Spain entered in the EU, it was signed that the technological development or scientific development will not be supported or encouraged in Spain. On the other hand the knowledge intensive economy is the only possible way to the prosperity, but the prosperity seems not to be a priority in EU.
So this is the story — country without its own financial politics, subordinated by the Euro, government that is engaged more to be good in the foreign eyes than to protect the peoples' interest, and the science and the education — on the street, with police beating minors, because of their demands for better education and school.
Sahun, I would like to point out the following regarding your proposal. Science should no longer be a vocation. Science is an attitude.
I totally agree.
In Spain the governments have tried to professionalize a vocation without changing its own production model. The result? Thousands of scientists, excellently trained in Spain with Spanish grants, flee in terror to other countries where they are most welcome. And they will not come back because these countries recognize their value. Excellence for free! Good deal!
Metaphorically, it is as if we had trained Lionel Messi at "La Masia" in Barcelona, and when he was an excellent player, we had transferred to Arsenal for FREE.
I am an Italian student who arrived in Spain in 2006, just a few years before the crisis started.
When I have arrived, the situation of research in Spain looked very promising, because recent increases in investments were improving research infrastructures and attracting researchers from all over the world. In a few years, Spain had become one of the most research-productive countries, climbing the classifications of publications and citations by year at an impressing pace.
So, it is very sad to see that the Spanish government does no longer wants to support research. I was not here before the boom in 2006 and I can not compare, but I think that in the few years of "good times" that Spanish researchers have had, they have make a wonderful job in growing and in communicating the importance of science to the rest of the society. Not only they have created several research centres and published lots of papers, but they have also done the very best to return the investments to the rest of the society. I wish that this country will recover soon from the crisis, and start growing as it was doing just a few years ago.
Incredible... but true!!!! someone must tell this loud and clear to society, please! all we have in Spain is our I+D, we don´t have fuel/minerals/gas... we are what we are able to think, investigate and create. Hope this could change as soon as posible, if not... our researchers must go out and that will be unforgettable! (sorry for my english).
I could not agree more! Sadly, the situation described in this article is a constant of Spain's scientific policy (or lack thereof), and the present government does not seem to have any intentions of changing things in this respect. The very fact that the responsibility of science policy has passed from one ministry to another over successive governments no fewer three times in the last ten years alone is very telling of the little regard that Spain's political establishment has for science and its impact, in spite of repeated pledges to the contrary. A national research agency, with a capacity to really design a stable scientific policy without political interference, is a desperate necessity if we are ever to change things.