The regional government favors the project of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria to house the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agency, while betting on Tenerife for the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence. At the limit of the term given by the central government to present the candidatures, the meeting of the Executive held today decided to support the three islands that have been interested in the new state-level aerospace entity, although the order of preference places Gran Canaria in first place, followed by Tenerife and Fuerteventura. In the case of the artificial intelligence body, the only candidacy presented was the one proposed by the Cabildo de Tenerife.
Given the insular struggle unleashed to house the Spanish Space Agency, the Government spokesman, Julius Perezpointed out that “we could have kept quiet” and not decided on any specific island but, nevertheless, Pérez warned that a ministerial order is the one that requires the Canarian Government to order the preferences, which have finally been ordered, in the case of the Aerospace Agency, with Gran Canaria as the first option, Tenerife as the second and Fuerteventura as the third, in response to strictly technical criteria, he specified.
Julio Pérez: «We could have kept quiet, but it makes no sense to pass the buck»
In the bases for choosing the future venues, the ministerial orders established as a criterion to be taken into account, among others, that “it will be positively valued that the candidacy is accompanied by a report issued by the Governing Council of the corresponding Autonomous Community supporting the suitability Of the same”. Hence, the councils interested in presenting their candidacies -Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Tenerife, for the Spanish Space Agency, and Tenerife, for the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence- sent their proposals to the Canary Islands Government. They also established as a criterion that “in the event that more than one candidacy had been nominated in the territorial scope of an autonomous community, this report must indicate the order of preference of each of the localities in question.”
The Canary Islands compete with at least eight more candidates to host the new body
The Autonomous Community has until next Monday to send its report to the Ministry, which includes the projects presented by the two capital islands. However, the Cabildo de Fuerteventura has announced that it will send its project directly to Madrid, so it will be the Government that finally decides where the headquarters of the future Space agency since, in addition to Canary Islandsthere are eight other candidates competing in the race to host the headquarters of this new state body: L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona), the Madrid municipalities of Robledo de Chavela or Tres Cantos, as well as Teruel, Seville, Huelva, León and Puertollano (Ciudad Real).
Julio Pérez did remark that in addition to considering the projects in Gran Canaria and Tenerife “suitable”, the Executive also expresses its full institutional and economic support for Fuerteventura in the construction of an stratoport intended for the takeoff and landing of drones and pseudosatellites, lor that it supposes a kind of airport for drones and some hybrid devices -between satellites and drones-, which allow to improve communications and, also, to collect exploration data by means of unmanned vehicles at high altitudes, which will offer a detailed observation of the terrestrial surface . The cost of the project is 23 million euros and the Governing Council has already approved the amount to be allocated to this new infrastructure.
Other Council agreements
State budgets
triangle trade
- The Government of the Canary Islands positively values the 2023 State budget bill and the reform in the field of triangular trade in the ZEC, although it intends to make this legal reform retroactive for tax periods beginning after the registration of companies in the Official Registry of Entities of the Canary Islands Special Zone.
Stabilization
Agreement for the bases
- The Executive has reached a preliminary agreement with the majority of the unions that will allow “processing the latest mechanisms and decisions” that must be adopted to launch the bases for stabilizing public employment, from which 3,500 workers of the General Administration of the Autonomous Community.
