The ‘Miura 1’ rocket is one step away from traveling into space. This Saturday, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, was present at the presentation ceremony of the first flight unit of the first private rocket developed entirely in Spain by the Alicante company PLD Space. The leader of the Executive has defended the “dream” and the aspiration of “putting Spain in the vanguard of the emerging and powerful space transportation industry”.
This has been conveyed in the course of his speech at the event that 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 to the 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 managed to Spain complexed by ‘that they invent’ is already just a bad memory from 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 a question, as the president has emphasized, of a sector with a total economic impact that exceeded 13,000 million euros in the “complicated” year 2020, which 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 stressed that the “specific weight” of the Spanish space industry “is also measured in investment in R+D+I, which already reaches 1,500 million euros, only behind the pharmaceutical industry”, as he highlighted.
A “state policy”
In line, Sánchez has warned that “advancing successfully along this path cannot be the initiative of a few”, but rather “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 the Government of Spain is doing, as he added.
He has thus alluded to the aerospace Perte, which “will mobilize until the year 2025 about 4,500 million of euros 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 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 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.
In the same way, the president has vindicated the “absolute commitment to revitalizing our R+D+I structure”, and in this regard, he has 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 for the interest of European science, but also for the economic interest of our continent”.
Faced with this, he has claimed the “way” of “change the cuts for investment in R+D+i“, which “is what we are doing” from the Government, he has defended, and has stressed that Spain is “the second country in the entire European Union that dedicates more resources from recovery plans, from ‘Next Generation’ funds, to R+D+i”, as well as that “the Science Law provides for the first time growing and sustainable public financing until reaching 1.25% of GDP in the year 2030”.
Along these lines, he also highlighted that “the budget of the Ministry of Science and Innovation for the year 2023 doubles” that of 2020, although he added that “it is not only about mobilizing public resources, but about doing it in the right direction for stimulate the link between private and public participation in the development of the leading industry”.
In line, Sánchez has dedicated words of recognition and congratulations to the Alicante company PLD Space for its “great work” in the design and manufacture of the ‘Miura 1’ rocketand concluded by pointing out that, with his presence and that of the Minister of Science at this event, he wanted to show that the promoters of this infrastructure is “a dream shared by all of Spanish society, because we are encouraged by a common goal, what is put Spain at the forefront of this emerging but also powerful space transportation industry”.
