The Government gives less recognition and salary to emigrant scientists who return to Spain

The Spanish chemist Hugo Gutiérrez, in the calculation servers of the University of Upsala (Sweden).HG

Scientists in Spain have been affected for years by a tangle of bureaucracy that has prevented them from buying chairs, has forced them to return money that they had already been granted or exceed forty years without having a fixed contract.

Despite the Government's attempts to solve these problems, “bloody” situations continue to occur, as defined by the scientist from Oviedo, Hugo Gutiérrez de Terán.

This computer specialist for the search for new drugs faces his return to Spain after years of research in Sweden and has to swallow the toad that the Government does not recognize the time worked outside of Spain.

“Leaving your country is essential for any self-respecting scientist, but the new government regulations penalize those who, like me, have spent years working in foreign centers,” claims this 45-year-old pharmacist.

According to Gutiérrez de Terán's calculations, the Government does not value his research time over the last 22 years: 12 at the University of Upsala (Sweden), 6 at Santiago de Compostela and 4 at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, ​​which which means about 6,000 euros less each year of salary starting from a base salary of about 35,000 euros, which is already less than half of what he earns in Sweden.

As of 2022, he will join the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia in Barcelona, ​​where he will move with his wife and two of his daughters to continue studying new molecules capable of treating cancer or Parkinson's.

“In the beginning, when you go abroad, you don't consider the option of going back.

Years go by, you think about it and in the end you decide to do it with enthusiasm, but you begin to see the problems.

And it must be said that I am not going back home, to Asturias,

Some 200 researchers with the same problem wrote a letter to the Ministry of Science denouncing this situation in October 2021. They were supported by the directors of 51 research centers throughout Spain.

There is "an obvious inequality" between scientists that can be "very negative" for Spanish research centers when it comes to attracting talent, they denounce in the letter, addressed to Raquel Yotti, general secretary of research and

of the minister, Diana Morant, to which EL PAÍS has had access.

The signatories assure that they have not received a response.

Those responsible for evaluating the research activity of the CSIC, the largest public research body in the country, have also alerted its president, Rosa Menéndez, to this problem.

They are surprised because until 2019 the problem did not exist: the years of science in other countries and those developed in Spanish universities or foundations were taken into account when calculating the total salary of a scientist who won a position by opposition.

In April 2019, the Ministry of Science, then headed by astronaut Pedro Duque, changed the regulations, so that only researchers who had carried out their work in Public Research Organizations could access this recognition.

Scientists from universities and technological centers of autonomous communities were left out,

Structural biologist Daniel Castaño handling a transmission electron microscope.DC

"By the fact of returning to Spain, I am accepting a salary about three times less than what I have now," explains Daniel Castaño, a 47-year-old specialist in mathematics applied to the study of protein structure, "and I accept that, but It is also that not being able to access these supplements for research merits means that I will receive up to 7,500 euros less than another scientist who has not left the network of Public Research Organizations in Spain”.

After 25 years of professional studies and research, first at Spanish universities and later at prestigious centers in Germany, such as the EMBL or the Max Planck, and Switzerland—he currently has a permanent place at the University of Basel—, Castaño decided to take a competitive examination to return to Spain.

He got the place in 2020 to enter as tenured scientist at the Biofisika Institute, near Bilbao, although he will not join until 2022 due to the lengthy administrative process.

“This is a penalty for the mobility of researchers, both nationally and internationally, which makes it difficult to attract talent and goes against the spirit of the law of science itself,” he highlights.

The Spanish scientific societies (Cosce), the group of the most advanced research centers in the country (Somma), the association of Spanish researchers abroad (Raicex) and trade union organizations such as CC OO have also shown their rejection of this situation.

Contacted by this newspaper, the Ministry of Science has recognized that the problem exists and is studying solutions.

In the next few days a legal possibility is opened to solve this problem.

The Government will approve on Tuesday and will later take to Parliament its new science law, a reform of the original law approved in 2011 during the Government of the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

That norm was born with the desire to give stability and job security to scientists, especially the younger ones, but it did not succeed.

Now, Diana Morant's Ministry of Science has prepared a reform of the law to improve the employment situation of scientists.

The regulations do not include any changes to salary supplements, but in your letter,

The very law that Morant will bring to Congress is aimed at bringing back the emigrant brains.

“Between 2011 and 2016, more than 5,000 research positions were lost and a large number of people were forced to establish their careers outside of Spain,” reads the preamble to the regulation.

The legal reform creates a new civil servant scientific career model "inspired by the Anglo-Saxon model called

designed to facilitate the reduction of the age of incorporation into the system and inbreeding," according to the draft of the project.

The paradox is that it is intended that elite scientists return from abroad, giving them less recognition of their merits than researchers who have spent years in the same position, which rewards inbreeding, according to the researchers.

The ministry's own regulations grant what it denies.

It seems like a paradox, but in the BOE it is possible.

Scientists abroad have the right to receive six-year terms, salary supplements granted by a commission of independent experts based on the quality of the research they have done so far.

Every six years you get a six-year term, which means about 1,500 euros more per year in salary regardless of where the investigations have been carried out.

There are also five-year periods, which reward research excellence in periods of five years with a similar amount.

Until 2019, the CSIC granted them regardless of the country of investigation.

But in 2019 the ministry regulations blocked this possibility and so it continues.

"This measure goes against the spirit of the investigation," says Carmen García, member of the CSIC advisory committee for the evaluation of five-year periods and signer of the letter sent to Rosa Menéndez along with 10 other people responsible for these evaluations in the organization.

This physicist specializing in particle colliders began working at the CSIC in 1993. Her institution recognized her for the time she had previously spent researching in the United Kingdom and at the University of Valencia.

"I don't understand why the ministry doesn't want to consider this type of merit now: it's very strong because they make researchers who do the normal thing, leave Spain, second-class candidates compared to those who stay," she adds.

From Sweden, Gutiérrez de Terán does not see a clear explanation either.

"Either the error has crept in or the budget is lacking," he ventures.

You can contact us at nuno@esmateria.com, follow