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The headquarters of the space agency will be in Seville, and that of artificial intelligence, in A Coruña

2022-12-05T22:21:00.489Z


The decision was announced this Monday after the Council of Ministers The Council of Ministers has chosen the city of Seville as the headquarters of the future Spanish Space Agency, and A Coruña to house the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence. This was confirmed by the Minister for Territorial Policy and Government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers meeting on Monday. The central governm


The Council of Ministers has chosen the city of Seville as the headquarters of the future Spanish Space Agency, and A Coruña to house the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence.

This was confirmed by the Minister for Territorial Policy and Government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers meeting on Monday.

The central government thus fulfills its objective of locating the headquarters of the newly created public bodies outside of Madrid.

Both decisions have been taken unanimously, as explained by the minister spokesperson.

Some of the cities that opted for these two locations and have been left out are León or Elche, for the space agency, and Granada or Alicante, in the case of artificial intelligence.

Seville has been selected among 21 locations that were competing to house the new body, which will depend on the Ministry of Science.

The Seville capital's candidacy, backed by the Junta de Andalucía, offered an "excellent venue" valued at 6.7 million euros and ceded to the new body at no cost by the City Council, equipped and in accordance with the requirements with a unique building and for exclusive use already available and appropriate to the activity, as explained in a press release by the Ministry of Territorial Policy, which has been in charge of directing the selection process.

The building that will house the new entity is the Center for Advanced Business Resources (CREA).

In addition, Seville offered four other possible alternative locations.

The important presence of companies in the aerospace sector in Andalusia has also weighed in on the decision, with 152 entities throughout the community, 64 of them in the capital itself.

Added to this is the existence of 4 universities and 22 research groups and 5 public organizations linked to space, according to Territorial Policy.

The idea of ​​locating the space agency in Seville had an important boost three years ago, when the city hosted a key meeting of the ministers of the 22 member countries of the European Space Agency.

At that meeting, a historic contribution of 14.4 billion euros to the budget of this organization was closed, an achievement in which the then Minister of Science, Pedro Duque, played a prominent role.

The constitution of the space agency, attached to the Ministries of Science, which is held by Diana Morant, and Defense, which is directed by Margarita Robles, is scheduled for the first quarter of 2023. The Government hopes to also create the Governing Council within that period and complete the process to appoint its director, according to sources from the Ministry of Science.

Seville was the great candidate to house the headquarters of what would be the Spanish NASA.

The Andalusian capital was, in fact, the first to apply.

“As soon as we learned about the open process, we had no doubts.

It cost very little to reactivate the ecosystem that already existed in the city in favor of the project, ”he admitted a few days ago to

Cinco Días

the mayor of Seville, Antonio Muñoz Martínez.

The mayor recounted how the Andalusian capital had a large part of the work already done, since for years there has been great public awareness and the economic world about the importance of promoting the aerospace sector.

Proof of this is the presence of the aeronautical and defense giant Airbus, with two plants with more than 3,000 workers in Seville.

For its part, the Andalucía Aerospace Cluster invoices 2,400 million euros and has 14,500 employees.

The Government's commitment to this balanced distribution of State institutions to end the concentration of public bodies in the capital Madrid opened up an unexpected political front for it a few months ago.

Aragón, chaired by Javier Lambán, one of the main barons of the PSOE, and Teruel Existe, which is among Pedro Sánchez's most reliable partners, announced in October that they will appeal the requirements to locate the Spanish Space Agency in court, understanding that discriminates against unpopulated areas and, therefore, would go against the spirit of an equitable presence throughout the territory of the headquarters of the newly created national entities.

The Executive's decision also represents a setback for Castilla y León, where three towns —the cities of León and Palencia and the town of Cebreros (Ávila)— competed to host the new body.

León's candidacy received an important boost last week, when the European Space Agency announced the first two Spanish astronauts in 30 years, both born, raised and educated in this city.

The idea of ​​creating a Spanish space agency is part of the new National Security Strategy that was presented in May 2021. The creation of this agency is an old demand of the sector that insists that Spain needs a unique vision regarding the space sector , with an organism, that coordinates and gives stability.

In 2015 the Ministries of Economy and Competitiveness, as well as Public Works, Defense and Industry began to work on this future space agency as a body that would bring together all the competencies in space matters.

The city of Seville has prevailed over the candidacies of Castilla-La Mancha (Cabanillas del Campo, Ciudad Real, Puertollano and Yebes);

Castilla y León (Cebreros, León and Palencia);

Andalusia (Huelva and Jerez), the Canary Islands (Puerto del Rosario, the island of Tenerife and the joint candidacy of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Agüimes and San Bartolomé de Tirajana);

Valencian Community (Elche);

Navarra (Estella and Lizarra);

Catalonia (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat);

Galicia (Ourense);

Murcia (San Javier);

Aragon (Teruel);

Madrid (Tres Cantos) and Euskadi (Zamudio).

Like "Expo 1992"

The mayor of Seville has compared this Monday the choice of the city as the venue with the 1992 Expo: "A very important piece of news, perhaps we can compare it to when we celebrated the 1992 Universal Exposition. News that compromises the future and with enormous responsibility ( …).

It is clear proof that when we all come together, Seville achieves its goal”.

Muñoz thanked the business sector, the four universities, the Seville Provincial Council and the Andalusian Government for their support.

The Andalusian Government has been happy about the nomination, while regretting that Granada was not chosen as the headquarters of the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence.

“Happiness cannot be complete because Granada had all the requirements.

Perhaps someone was afraid of giving the two venues to Andalusia ”, said the spokesman for the Junta, Ramón Fernández-Pacheco, about the Government's decision, divided between Andalusia and Galicia.

The estimated impact that the designation as headquarters will cause foresees that in a decade the turnover of the space industry in the Andalusian capital will rise to 300 million (now it is 50 million) and that employment will quadruple, from 400 to 1,600 highly qualified positions, according to a report by the International University of Andalusia (UNIA), Andalucía Aerospace and the Andalusian Technology Corporation (CTA).

Seville City Council plans to create an office to manage and support the integration of agency workers in the city, in order to meet their housing, school, health center and job search needs for family members.

In short, it is about putting out a red carpet for the agency's employees to smooth out the administrative procedures that bureaucracy often makes difficult, in addition to offering advantageous conditions with the banks for the staff that land in the Andalusian capital.

“Today is a day for history, very important for all of Andalusia.

The Spanish Space Agency will be an exceptional boost for our economy, linking Andalusia to innovation, industry and continuous improvement to help attract investment and generate opportunities.

It is a very important step to continue building this aerospace

hub

that radiates from Seville to other Andalusian provinces”, extolled Javier González de Lara, president of the Andalusian Confederation of Entrepreneurs (CEA).

Artificial intelligence

The Council of Ministers agreed in September to start the procedure to establish the physical headquarters of the future Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA), which this Monday has been decided to be based in A Coruña.

With this, the Government highlighted, Spain will become the first country in the European Union with a state agency to supervise Artificial Intelligence (AI), taking precedence over the entry into force of the future European AI regulation, which establishes the need to that the Member States have a supervisory authority in this matter.

The creation of the state agency is contemplated in the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy and has an item of five million euros for its implementation in the General Budgets of 2022.

According to the Government, the Spanish AI Supervision Agency will enjoy autonomy, independence, its own assets and administrative powers.

It will be key to ensure compliance with European regulations on the matter and to supervise its correct interpretation.

In addition, it aims to raise awareness about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on society, with the aim of generating confidence in a respectful and guaranteeing ecosystem in the use of this technology.

In this sense, the agency's main mission is to minimize the risks that AI can bring in fields such as security, privacy and people's health, as well as other fundamental rights.

A Coruña has prevailed over the candidacies of Ourense, Granada, Jerez de la Frontera, Salamanca, Segovia, Alicante, Barcelona, ​​Guadalajara, Leganés,

The designation as it has been received with euphoria in the academic and political institutions of A Coruña.

The city has turned to defending this candidacy headed by the University of A Coruña, which was first chosen by the Xunta against those of Santiago and Ourense in a hard-fought process where 200 indicators were valued.

Among the strengths of the A Coruña project is the fact that its metropolitan area concentrates a good part of the ICT sector in Galicia.

A Coruña is the municipality with the most companies in this sector (700) and is home to 60% of the turnover and more than 45% of the jobs generated by the community in the field of new technologies (7,200 jobs).

It also has the so-called ICT City, a pole of digital innovation that will be built in the old facilities of its historic weapons factory.

It will house an industrial park, a technology campus and an Artificial Intelligence business incubator.

Behind the candidacy "there is a 30-year job", highlights Amparo Alonso, professor of Computing and Artificial Intelligence at the University of A Coruña and coordinator of the ICT City.

Three decades ago the Faculty of Informatics was founded in A Coruña, the incubator of "talent" on which "little by little" an "ecosystem" of very powerful technology companies has been built, highlights Alonso, who until recently was president of the Spanish Association of Artificial Intelligence.

This researcher explains that the Coruña area is not only the headquarters of technology-producing companies of various sizes, but also important companies that are "consumers" of these advances, such as the textile giant Inditex.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-12-05

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