Anger spreads through laboratories, companies and official offices of Granada. The city attended the call of the Government to choose the headquarters of the future Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence, which on December 5 the Executive announced that it would fall in A Coruña. 21 criteria were established to rate the worth of the candidates aspect by aspect, but the resolution published in the BOE does not include the numerical note received by any of them, among the first of which, apart from Granada and A Coruña, Alicante stood out. An estimate of the experts of the Granada proposal indicates that the score of their city must have far exceeded that of the winner and the mayor of Granada has asked the Ministry of Territorial Planning, the portfolio that dealt with the call, to make public the scores of the three best candidates. Francisco Cuenca, of the PSOE, demands “to clear up the doubts” and does not rule out appealing the decision.
A lot was at stake. The headquarters of the future organization – which will supervise the risks on safety, health and the rights of the use of artificial intelligence – would have generated in Granada in five years 625 million euros and 9,800 new direct jobs for the province with the highest unemployment rate of Spain, according to the economic chapter of the project. The decision of the Council of Ministers —announced on December 5— to locate the future agency in A Coruña has aroused protest from local and regional political forces, the academic community, and the Granada business community.
The power to decide the headquarters rested with the Council of Ministers, but after an advisory commission made up of various ministries and chaired by the head of Territorial Policy set criteria to assess the candidacy. The quality of the infrastructures and the building offered to house the headquarters, the socioeconomic impact that the installation of the agency would entail and also, as a positive argument, the social and economic deficiencies of the territory were valued. Thus until adding a total of 21 criteria, some divided into sub-criteria, which the call would score from 0 to 3 points.
16 cities were presented and, based on the total points obtained in each section, Granada, Alicante and A Coruña were best valued. But the BOE of the resolution does not show the scores that they had received nor does it indicate which of them has received the best grade. On the other hand, it does provide considerations such as “positive”, “optimal”, “excellent” how the commission has assessed the criteria. Words without the equivalences in points that the call had established. Of the numerical notes received in each section, nothing.
This newspaper has requested information from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, to which the future agency will be attached, which prepared the report favorable to A Coruña, and this department has sent this newspaper to the Ministry of Territorial Planning, to which EL PAÍS has asked for numerical scores, to no avail. The ministry headed by Isabel Rodríguez highlights that the non-binding text that supported A Coruña was unanimously approved by the commission and stresses that, according to the bases, the Council of Ministers could even have chosen a non-candidate city. The bases established that “the one that best meets the requirements for the reasons stated in the commission’s opinion” should be chosen and the choice would be made “according to the published selection criteria.” Calviño celebrated the concession of the headquarters to his hometown on social networks and visited the building that will house it last week.
But Granada’s candidacy, in which a hundred experts have participated, does not come up with the accounts. One of the coordinators of the project, Francisco Herrera, Councilor for Science and Innovation and Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada (UGR), points out that the resolution lacks “clarified justification based on the criteria.” In an internal document to which this newspaper has had access, four experts responsible for coordinating the candidacy point out: “We cannot find any way to interpret the BOE that leads us to conclude that A Coruña has obtained a higher score than Granada”.
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Pilar Aranda, rector of the UGR, reports that several experts from the candidacy and from her university have made a calculation with various numerical estimates based on the texts published in the BOE: she grants Granada 81 points, Alicante 74 and A Coruña 71 .
Aranda emphasizes that his university appears in the first position of artificial intelligenceofficial in the ranking from US News and Clarivate (if the United Kingdom and Switzerland are included, it is the third in Europe), and that Granada is home to the only four Spanish scientists in this field who are part of the 1% most cited in the world. One of them, Professor Enrique Herrera-Viedma, has participated in the calculations and concludes: “The report that has been published in BOE can be seen from different approaches, but in no case would A Coruña come out first.”
Other experts consulted add that the resolution values criteria taking into account the entire Galician autonomous community and, in the case of Granada, provincial, local or only the UGR and cite population density or scientific production as examples.
“We have followed the call closely,” the Socialist mayor of Granada highlights by phone. Francisco Cuenca assures that due to the business ecosystem, the economic environment and the economic situation of his city, it should have “the highest position” and he justifies his request for the scores because “Granada society” asks him to do so and as ” best way to clarify all doubts”.
The resolution of the BOE, which indicates that A Coruña did not include the commitment to assume the financial costs of the project and that since that candidacy “a detailed projective analysis has not been carried out” on the impacts and benefits of the agency.
Asked about this BOE observation, the mayoress of A Coruña, Inés Rey, also a socialist, affirms that she does not want to go into “details and controversies with other cities” and has emphasized that her city meets all the requirements and that it has obtained ” maximum score in a clear and transparent process”. Asked if she knows that score, the mayoress has insisted that she “does not go into details.” Rey points out that the proposal from A Coruña was endorsed by 90 companies and that it offered a historic mansion in the center of the city as its headquarters.
The mayor of Granada, who is running for re-election in the May elections, has received the support of his party in the province and in Andalusia. “We agree with the mayor of Granada and with the PSOE of Granada that there must be a forceful clarification from the State,” said the Secretary of Organization of the Andalusian socialists, Noel López, on Tuesday. informs Lourdes Lucio. Days before, on Friday, the PSOE Municipal Policy Secretary, Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, asked the mayor in an interview on Canal Sur that “moderate their opinions regarding the decisions of the Government”. The president of the Junta, the popular Juan Manuel Moreno, offered the legal services of the Andalusian administration to the candidacy.
The third candidate among the best placed, Alicante, will not present an appeal, the Minister of Innovation of the Valencian Generalitat, Josefina Bueno, informs this newspaper. On the other hand, in the concession of another agency, the Spanish Aerospace Agency, which has fallen to Seville, the National Court has admitted for processing an appeal from Teruel Existe that asks for a precautionary suspension of the decision.
The mayor met on Monday with the project’s experts, who conveyed “outrage” and petitions to present everything from allegations to challenges and appeals against the call, several attendees told this newspaper. This Friday the mayor will meet with representatives of the city’s institutions and social agents, united around the project in the Pact for Granada, while he continues to wait for the ministry to tell him what the notes were.
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