Spanish Government's Support for Basic Research Sacrificed to Military R&D. (October 30, 2004)

    In the run up to Spain's March 2004 election  socialist leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, promised to double Spain's €4-billion (A$6.8-billion) annual research and development budget by 2008.

Rather optimistically Spain's civilian researchers hoped that would mean spending would increase by 25% in 2005 as a first step towards that goal and that a significant proportion would be directed to basic research.

The Zapatero government has now brought down its 2005 budget which allocates an increase of just under an 8% for university and civilian government laboratories. Overall there is a marked increase for R&D but the major increases are to go toward military work, including the development and testing of weapons systems. Spain's civilian researchers have cried foul and have suggested vigorously that there should be a clear demarcation between military and civilian spending as well as increased support for non-military research.

As Nature reports in its October 28 issue, "Much of the budget's increases consist of interest-free loans that will be made available mainly to businesses for their development work — something that won't help basic researchers.

    "'Companies or private foundations can ask for these loans, but how are we scientists going to do it? It doesn't make sense,' complains Joan Guinovart, president of the Confederation of Spanish Scientific Societies."

Guinovart voiced the views of a number of university and government civilian researchers saying, "We want a 25% increase in direct funds to research done in universities and public research centres," reinforcing a statement made just prior to the March election calling for more support for Spanish science to which the major political parties indicated that they were receptive to the scientists pleas (see The Scientist February 26, 2004). The scientists' statement pointed out, "The state research budget has stagnated over the last 10 years," and called for a sustained increase for research and development so support reaches 2% of gross domestic product by 2010. Currently Spain allocates 0.96% GDP for R&D.