90
necessary to skirt Los Llanos de Aridane and enter from Garafía in the north.
Unconvinced, Galeán and his crew ascended from the north-eastern side of
the island and crossed the dramatic Degollada de Franceses, just where the
Barranco de los Hombres (a steep gorge descending right down to the sea)
meets the Barranco del Diablo (another gorge overlooking the Caldera de
Taburiente on the other side). Using a mechanical digger and an expert operator from ICONA, they built the road along a knife-edge with sheer precipices
of unstable rock on either side. There are spine-chilling photographs of the
work: it was an epic feat. The road works were completed in 1978, and the
breathtaking views from Los Andenes are today a great tourist attraction. A
viewpoint has been built there for tourists to stop, admire, and take photographs of the view: on one side the Caldera de Taburiente, and on the other a
gorge with a vertiginous drop to the sea.
As soon as the road was finished, military personnel used it to find a site for
a powerful radar system. They arrived at Roque de los Muchachos and decided
that this would be the perfect spot for it! As I shall describe in the next chapter, they very nearly prevented the building of the Observatory and the signing of the treaty. Also in that chapter, I describe how I locked horns with
President Suárez over this matter.
As the negotiations progressed, we pushed forward with the infrastructures.
In March 1977 we held a meeting with our colleagues in the huts of the IAC
in La Laguna to discuss joint planning for the future Roque de los Muchachos
Observatory, and in December the Governing Board of the IAC approved a
budget of 12,000,000 pesetas (72,000 euros) for the preparation of projects
for the Observatory construction works. We wanted the projects drafted
beforehand in order to negotiate the building of the Observatory with the
government. In 1978, we persuaded the Council of Ministers to earmark
467,000,000 pesetas (2,802,000 euros) for the building of the Observatory,
to be included in the Programme of Investments in the Canary Islands, following a visit to the Canaries by President Suárez.
All through 1978, adjustments were made and points of conflict resolved
concerning the treaty. We finally got what we wanted: ample, free-of-charge
observing time and genuine help in training personnel and building an
advanced research centre. Our much longed-for IAC was to be a competitive
research centre, where astrophysicists and technologists would be trained, scientific instrumentations developed, and support given to Spanish astrophysics. It was also to be an outreach hub for astrophysics.
The finalized treaty was structured in three levels: 1) an inter-state
AGREEMENT, 2) a PROTOCOL among ‘designated institutions’, and 3)
specific ACCORDS between the IAC and each of the ‘user institutions’. In
F. Sánchez
necessary to skirt Los Llanos de Aridane and enter from Garafía in the north.
Unconvinced, Galeán and his crew ascended from the north-eastern side of
the island and crossed the dramatic Degollada de Franceses, just where the
Barranco de los Hombres (a steep gorge descending right down to the sea)
meets the Barranco del Diablo (another gorge overlooking the Caldera de
Taburiente on the other side). Using a mechanical digger and an expert operator from ICONA, they built the road along a knife-edge with sheer precipices
of unstable rock on either side. There are spine-chilling photographs of the
work: it was an epic feat. The road works were completed in 1978, and the
breathtaking views from Los Andenes are today a great tourist attraction. A
viewpoint has been built there for tourists to stop, admire, and take photographs of the view: on one side the Caldera de Taburiente, and on the other a
gorge with a vertiginous drop to the sea.
As soon as the road was finished, military personnel used it to find a site for
a powerful radar system. They arrived at Roque de los Muchachos and decided
that this would be the perfect spot for it! As I shall describe in the next chapter, they very nearly prevented the building of the Observatory and the signing of the treaty. Also in that chapter, I describe how I locked horns with
President Suárez over this matter.
As the negotiations progressed, we pushed forward with the infrastructures.
In March 1977 we held a meeting with our colleagues in the huts of the IAC
in La Laguna to discuss joint planning for the future Roque de los Muchachos
Observatory, and in December the Governing Board of the IAC approved a
budget of 12,000,000 pesetas (72,000 euros) for the preparation of projects
for the Observatory construction works. We wanted the projects drafted
beforehand in order to negotiate the building of the Observatory with the
government. In 1978, we persuaded the Council of Ministers to earmark
467,000,000 pesetas (2,802,000 euros) for the building of the Observatory,
to be included in the Programme of Investments in the Canary Islands, following a visit to the Canaries by President Suárez.
All through 1978, adjustments were made and points of conflict resolved
concerning the treaty. We finally got what we wanted: ample, free-of-charge
observing time and genuine help in training personnel and building an
advanced research centre. Our much longed-for IAC was to be a competitive
research centre, where astrophysicists and technologists would be trained, scientific instrumentations developed, and support given to Spanish astrophysics. It was also to be an outreach hub for astrophysics.
The finalized treaty was structured in three levels: 1) an inter-state
AGREEMENT, 2) a PROTOCOL among ‘designated institutions’, and 3)
specific ACCORDS between the IAC and each of the ‘user institutions’. In
F. Sánchez