The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has defended this Saturday the “dream” and the aspiration to “put Spain at the forefront of the emerging and powerful space transportation industry”.
This has been transferred during his speech at the presentation ceremony of the first flight unit of ‘Miura 1’, the first private rocket developed entirely in Spain by the Alicante company PLD Space, which was held at the facilities of the El Arenosillo Experimentation Center (Cedea) in Huelva after being transferred this week from the headquarters of his company, in Elche, and which was also attended by the minister of Science and Innovation, Diana Morant.
Pedro Sánchez has taken advantage of this act to defend that “we have achieved that the Spain with a complex about ‘that they invent’ is now just a bad memory of the past”, as well as that, “if not too long ago, the idea of a powerful aerospace industry in Spain and competitive seems like a chimera, today no one can deny that it is already a reality”.
It is, as highlighted by the president, a sector with a total economic impact that exceeded 13,000 million euros in the “complicated” year 2020which was equivalent to 1.2 percent of Spanish GDP and 5.4% of the industrial Gross Domestic Product, as well as underlining that it is “a power capable of translating nothing more and nothing less than 155,000 direct indirect jobs, many of them highly specialized”, as he also highlighted.
The President also underlined that the “specific weight” of the Spanish space industry “It is also measured in investment in R+D+I, which already reaches 1,500 million euros, only behind the pharmaceutical industry”, as he highlighted.
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Intervention of the president @sanchezcastejon in the presentation of the launch base of PLD Space. https://t.co/XHgAMihQop
— The Moncloa (@desdelamoncloa) March 11, 2023
A “state policy”
In line, Sánchez has warned that “advancing successfully along this path It cannot be the initiative of a few“, but that “it requires recognizing, first, the strategic nature of this sector, with a transformation that is also productive, industrial, fundamental in our country, and doing it, consequently, as a true State policy”, which is “exactly” what is being done from the Government of Spain, as he added.
You have thus alluded to the aerospace Perte, which “It will mobilize around 4,500 million euros until the year 2025 designed to respond to key challenges” such as “quantum communications, environmental control, security, international cooperation and also to contribute to our positioning as a country on the European map with regard to the commercial use of space”.
“Synergy” with the new Spanish Space Agency
Likewise, the president has alluded to the new Spanish Space Agency, which is going to be located in Seville and whose statutes were approved by the Council of Ministers last Tuesday. It is, as Sánchez has defended, “a historic claim by the Spanish aerospace sector to which the Executive finally responded”, and which It is “essential to provide continuity to industrial scientific projects”, as well as to “also have a high representation in international organizations, which is always essential if we want our voice to be taken into account”, and to “develop a true national policy on space matters, linked” also “with the private sector “, he added.
The president has defended that the location of said agency in Seville, “as part of this process of territorial decentralization of State institutions” promoted by the Government, “will foster a happy synergy” with the El Arenosillo Experimentation Center.
Similarly, the president has claimed the “absolute commitment when it comes to revitalizing our R+D+I structure”and in this regard, he lamented that “we have lost a decade for science and innovation” in Spain “due to the financial crisis of the past decade”, and “also due to recipes applied at the time and which proved harmful not only to the interest of European science, but also for the economic interest of our continent”.
Faced with this, he has vindicated the “path” of “changing the cuts for investment in R+D+i”, which “is what we are doing” from the Government, he has defended, and has highlighted that Spain is “the second country in the entire European Union that dedicates more resources from the recovery plans, from the ‘Next Generation’ funds, to R+D+i”, as well as that “the Science Law provides for the first time the growing public financing and sustainable until reaching 1.25% of GDP in the year 2030”.
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Along these lines, he has also highlighted that “the budget of the Ministry of Science and Innovation for the year 2023 doubles” that of 2020, although he has added that “it is a question not only of mobilizing public resources, but of doing it in the right direction to stimulate the link between private and public participation in the development of the leading industry”.
In line, Sánchez dedicated words of appreciation and congratulations to the Alicante company PLD Space for its “great work” in the design and manufacture of the ‘Miura 1’ rocket, and concluded by noting that, with his presence and that of the minister of Science in this act, they wanted to express that the promoters of this infrastructure is “a dream shared by all of Spanish society, because we are encouraged by a common objective, which is to put Spain at the forefront of this emerging but also powerful industry of space transportation.