The three candidacies Canary Islands to get hold of the future headquarters of the Spanish Space Agency (AEE), Gran Canaria, Tenerife Y Fuerteventura, They will still have to wait several weeks to find out if any of them is finally chosen. Although the central government had announced on the dates prior to the presentation of candidacies, on November 7, that the decision would be made at the end of this monththat is to say, before this Wednesday the 30th, there is at the moment no expectation that this deadline will be met, according to sources from the Ministry of Territorial Policyin charge of the process, which now takes December 31 as the reference date.
One of the reasons for the delay in this decision is the high number of applications submitted, 21 in total, according to government sources, and the consequent complexity of analyzing each one of them and of drafting the reports that all the ministries, up to eleven in total, and bodies involved must make in this regard. Those reports actually They should have been ready before the 18th, complying with the 10-day deadline they had according to the schedule established in the agreement of the Council of Ministers that established the procedure. However, the “success and great reception” of the call, as described by the Government after registering the 21 candidacies presented, are delaying those reports and forcing a postponement of the final decision. “Among the candidacies presented, some have more chances and others less, within the objective criteria set, but the truth is that it is a highly contested candidacy,” said the Minister for Science and Technology, Diana Morant.
From the Canary Islands, the expectation of all this procedure is followed without even having clues or unofficial information about the possibilities of some of his three candidacies, remembering in any case that the official of the regional Executive is the one presented by the Ctown hall of Gran Canaria by prevailing in the assessment on the criteria required to those of Tenerife and Puerto del Rosario (Fuerteventura). Nor is the Gran Canaria council aware of the progress of the previous studies of the central administration to decide on this important headquarters of a newly created state body, with 500 million budget startsl, which is intended to be located outside of Madrid, within the framework of the process of decentralization of official State entities that the current Executive has launched chaired by Pedro Sanchez.
The Minister of Science and Technology assures that the headquarters “is highly disputed” and that all candidates will benefit from the aerospace program
The candidacy of Gran Canaria happens to be one of the options with serious possibilities of hosting the headquarters due to the characteristics of your project, but in recent weeks there has been talk of several more as applicants who could wrest the installation of the so-called ‘Spanish nasa’ from the island. In addition to Seville, which has always been talked about as the candidate with perhaps the greatest possibilities, others are being uncovered in the pools such as those of Elche (Alicante) and Puertollano (Ciudad Real). Huelva It could be an alternative Andalusian candidacy to that of the Seville capital. Some of the remaining 15 are Three songswhich as a municipality in the geographical environment of the capital Madrid, in principle, would not count if the political criteria of decentralization that the Government seeks is met, Estella (Navarra), Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona), León, San Javier (Murcia), or Zamudio (Vizcaya).
The Gran Canaria option counts for its part, in addition to meeting most of the requirements related to airport connectivity, a dynamic business and research environment, and an appropriate hotel environment, with elements in its favor such as hosting relevant organizations such as the Canary Islands Space Center managed by the INTA. Also with others related to the sector, although on other islands, such as the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), with its observatories located on La Palma and Tenerife, or the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (Plocan), and the Canary Islands project ‘Stratoport for Haps’in Fuerteventura, which promotes the construction of an infrastructure for the take-off and landing of high-altitude pseudosatellites and drones.
pending resources
The delay of the decision until the end of the year, in any case with the idea of starting its implementation in the first two months of next year, could also be conditioned by the contentious-administrative appeal filed a month ago before the National Court by the Teruel Existe political formation against the technical criteria set by the central government. As of yesterday, this party continued without a response from the judicial body, but if it occurred before the government decision on the location of the headquarters, it could paralyze the process. Those who have answered the merely administrative appeal of the Government of Aragon and the Provincial Council of Teruel Against that same decree on the criteria to locate the headquarters, the central government has been rejecting said appeal, although both Aragonese institutions have announced that they will also appeal to the National Court and also in the contentious-administrative field.
The decision process is subject to the advisory commission Created to determine the headquarters of the new public bodies, attached to the Ministry of Territorial Policy and body that assists the Council of Ministers in the election process, have all the information in their hands and verify that the candidacies meet the established requirements. The Commission is chaired by the Minister of Territorial Policy, Isabel Rodríguez, and representatives of all the ministries involved are part of it. Once the term for the issuance of the ministerial reports has concluded, the Commission will prepare an opinion that will analyze the possible venues for the affected entity, an opinion that may take into consideration locations that have not been nominated but that meet the criteria established by the Commission. The opinion will be forwarded to the Delegate Government Commission for the Demographic Challenge and will be submitted to the Council of Ministers, which, after assessing it, will adopt its decision.
Despite all this procedure, the candidacy of Teruel and those of the most unpopulated regions of Spain and without the required infrastructures believe that the established criteria are already clearly determined so that only some very specific territories can qualify for this seat, and they consider that there could even already be a “political decision” taken outside of all this administrative mechanism. For her part, the Minister of Science and Technology, Diana Morant, declared that “regardless of where the headquarters are located, what is being recognized is the aerospace network and the different sources of activity that already exist in our field in country and the entire network will benefit from the Aerospace Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation (Perte) and from the agency itself.”
