Seville, (EFE).- The Spanish Space Agency begins its journey this Thursday with the first meeting of the governing council, its main governing body that was born with the challenge of defining the national space plan and preparing the Spanish space law.
The Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Diana Morant, chaired the first meeting of the governing council at the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agency in Seville, made up of seventeen members from eleven ministries and autonomous bodies. She has advanced that the 75 officials who will work in this body will be gradually incorporated and it will be fully operational in the next quarter.
On the occasion of the European presidency that Spain will hold in the second half of 2023, a space week has been organized, from December 6 to 10 in Seville. Where international meetings will be held such as an informal EU council of ministers on space competitiveness. An inter-ministerial meeting of the European Space Agency (ESA) and a high-level meeting of ministers from EU and Ibero-American countries. With the aim of being a “bridge between the EU and America”, the minister informed.
Seville and the Spanish Space Congress
The Seville capital will also host the Spanish space congress in November, which until now had only been held in Madrid, according to the minister. She has stressed that during the Spanish presidency in the EU, space will be given prominence. And the European space security strategy will probably be approved.
The setting up of the Spanish Space Agency supposes the unification and coordination in this body – dependent on the Ministries of Science and Defense – of the space policies that were distributed among different ministries. And it will manage a volume of projects with a budget of about 700 million per year. They are added to the almost one billion invoiced by the private space sector in Spain.
The minister was accompanied by the director of this agency, Miguel Belló, and by the mayor of Seville, Antonio Muñoz. She has celebrated the speed in the start-up of this agency, included in the Science Law that was approved in September 2022. It was awarded to Seville last December. Within the process of deconcentration of venues launched by the government of Spain and its statutes were approved last March.
In this sense, he explained that of the 75 workers contemplated in the statutes of the Spanish Space Agency there are four types. Freely appointed management personnel and labor personnel who will be subrogated to CEDETI (Ministry of Defense). As a “minimum with the same salary conditions” and with an incentive plan for individual or family relocation.
Agreement between Science and Defense
Military personnel who will transfer to Seville on active duty will also be incorporated. And it will maintain its category of civil servants and a public offer of employment will be called. In principle there are six places and it will be increased progressively.
The change of ownership by the Seville city council of the CREA building, which houses the headquarters of this agency, is pending an agreement between the Ministries of Science and Defense, explained the minister, who congratulated Muñoz for the “effort, spirit and talent of Seville”.
The mayor celebrated the start of the Space Agency’s journey with the first meeting of the governing council, which will mean a “turning point in the Seville economy”, and recalled that the European Space Agency has also chosen this city to host a incubator of companies linked to the space sector. EFE