The Spanish biologist Ruben Garcia He was stunned on February 22 in his laboratory at Harvard University (USA). He had just cracked the code that cells use to send messages to each other over a distance and had published his results in the temple of world science, the magazine Nature. That morning, the Spanish newspapers spoke of the internal war in the Popular Party, after it was uncovered that the brother of the president of the Community of Madrid had received an income of 283,000 euros from a company that obtained public contracts by hand to supply medical supplies. The Harvard researcher was struck by the amount, because he was awaiting a grant from the Community of Madrid —created to encourage the return of elite scientists— and the amount was similar, although in exchange for five years of hard work. That morning, a technician from the Ministry of Education informed him that, “given the circumstances of the pandemic suffered”, the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso had eliminated an annual call for aid from its Talent Attraction Program.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry confirms to EL PAÍS that 85 leading researchers were left unable to receive this aid. Rubén García was counting on this grant to leave Harvard and join the National Center for Biotechnology, in Madrid, where he had already reached an agreement to continue his research, with possible applications in the early diagnosis of cancer and in the treatment of diseases, such as diabetes. The call for 2022 will be published in May or June, according to what the technician informed him, but the resolution could be delayed until next year. “I have nowhere to be after the summer,” laments Garcia, who is also going to apply for other national and European aid to return to Madrid, where he was born 35 years ago.
The start of 2020 was dramatic for the Community of Madrid, one of the regions most affected during the first wave of covid. It went from a hundred deaths a day in a normal year to more than 650 at the peak of the pandemic. President Isabel Díaz Ayuso, of the Popular Party, governed then with the support of Ciudadanos, but she needed the ultra Vox party to approve the public accounts for 2020. There was a war between everyone and there was no agreement. The community reached 2021 with the 2019 budgets extended, some 20,000 million euros. The spokeswoman for the ministry affirms that, in 2020, “due to the extension of budgets and the difficulties in administrative procedures derived from the pandemic situation, a new call could not be made” for the aid.
Rubén García wanted to opt for a bag of 200,000 euros to investigate for five years, plus 55,000 euros per year salary. It is one of the most important grants in the Spanish context, but its amount is minuscule compared to the 1.5 million euros for five years offered by the German Helmholtz Association to leading young researchers. “I have had more economically attractive offers in other cities and in other countries, but I want to keep trying to return to Madrid,” explains García, a scientist raised in the Madrid municipality of Alcorcón who has been researching in Canada, Germany and the US for 12 years.
The spokeswoman for the Ministry of Education argues that the extension of the budgets and the rigidity of the spending ceiling prevented assuming new commitments and forced a call for aid to be skipped. The Government of Pedro Sánchez, on the other hand, was able to maintain and even increase the national equivalent of these grants, the Ramón y Cajal, despite also working with budgets extended from 2018. The Ministry of Science and Innovation approved 247 grants for 2020 , with a total of 80 million euros, 30% more than the previous year.
The Community of Madrid usually comes out very well in the photo of science in Spain. Is the second autonomy with higher spending on Research and Development (R&D) per inhabitant, only behind the Basque Country. This data, however, is a mirage, because it includes the investments of private companies and scientific institutions of the State based in the capital. The data from the Ministry of Science reveal that, in reality, the Community of Madrid is third from the bottom in percentage of the budget dedicated to R&D, with 0.64% in 2020, far from the 3.3% of La Rioja, from 2, 9% from the Basque Country or 2.4% from Castilla y León.
The Community of Madrid is third from the bottom in percentage of the budget dedicated to R&D, with 0.64% in 2020
the archaeologist Alicia Torija, a deputy for Más Madrid in the Assembly, is very critical of the Díaz Ayuso Executive. “The reality of the regional government is that it is not committed to science. Not only was the 2020 call skipped without explanation, but the 2021 call came out at the end of the year without substantial improvements, without taking into account the havoc that covid has caused in research careers and without any gender perspective, ”she says. . “There were mechanisms to be able to carry out the necessary budget modification or to have made contracts charged to other items or as a matter of urgency. As almost always, it is a question of political will”, she sentences.
Lawyer Fernando Fernandez Lara, deputy and spokesperson for the Treasury of the PSOE in the Assembly, also denounces the secrecy of the ministry and does not accept its excuses for leaving 85 elite researchers without aid. “They have absolutely silenced him. The attraction of talent is not on the roadmap of this government”, he reproaches. the chemical engineer Francisco Javier Vilaplanapresident of the Network of Associations of Spanish Researchers and Scientists Abroad (Rootex), explains that his organization was also unaware of the decision of the Community of Madrid to abolish the 2020 aid.
The spokeswoman for the ministry details that the ordinary call for 2020 disappeared, but the one for 2021 was brought forward —with some four million euros— to December 2020. “That advanced call was called Talent 2020, but in reality it is the one for 2021″, clarifies the same source. That confusion with the names meant that no one noticed until now that the aid had disappeared. The Ministry of Education is currently headed by Enrique Osorio. Between August 2019 and March 2021, the counselor with powers over these grants was Edward Sicilyresponsible for the portfolio of Science, Universities and Innovation until Isabel Díaz Ayuso decided to strike down all the directors of Ciudadanos.
The Madrid president highlighted on February 2 that her government has increased the budget for science and innovation by almost 50% for 2022, to 172 million euros. “This Community registers the highest volume of investment in R&D in the public and private sectors each year, but it is not enough and we want more and better research”, Diaz Ayuso proclaimed at the community science awards ceremony. The president assured that her government understands science “as a global strategy and with measures to support research fixed in time.” For the socialist deputy Fernández Lara, 172 million “for a community like Madrid is a ridiculous bet that does not serve to attract anyone.”
Biologist Rubén García laments the missed opportunity. “The pandemic should have been an impulse to realize that more money must be put into science, instead of reducing its budget. As an example, vaccines for covid. They could be done so quickly because efforts and investments had been put in for many years,” he reflects. “The discoveries that the researchers arrived with these aids were going to make could be the basis of treatments against current or future diseases, as well as being a contribution to the wealth of our region. By losing that call, all this has been lost and those researchers have gone to other regions or other countries to contribute their new ideas”.
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