106
capacity to act’. The repercussions of this step on the growth of astrophysics
were immediate.
The Institute’s novel status even influenced subsequent legal norms applied
to academic and scientific bodies throughout the country. But new ideas give
rise to suspicion and envy, and the ‘Astrophysics Law’ has had its share of flak
from way back in the eighties until the present day. The urge on the part of
civil servants in any administration to unify and standardize, with their dedication to ‘proper channels’ and ‘precedents’, was, and continues to be, another
permanent hindrance for the IAC. We shall also speak of this because it is a
persistent obstacle set up by bureaucratized administrative structures that bog
down and stifle progress in any country.
As mentioned earlier, in 1979, after years of hard negotiations, something
of major importance had been achieved: several European countries had
signed a multinational treaty for the IAC Observatories to host telescopes
from all over the world and to safeguard the construction, use, and ownership
of such advanced instrumentation. This treaty was ratified by the parliaments
of the signatory countries and remains in force and operative today, and on
this solid foundation rests the splendour of the Canarian Observatories. I
emphasize this because it had a decisive influence on the passing of the
Astrophysics Law.
After this, we understood that the time had come for us to take the definitive step in tackling the juridical formalization of the IAC that would give it
genuine capabilities of self-management and governance. We needed these
capabilities in order to exploit all the possibilities that were now open to us,
capabilities that could not be granted by the University of La Laguna, CSIC,
or the island cabildos.
It was plain to us that we needed a bold and wily legal expert able to think
outside the box. Luckily, a young legal academic, Professor Gaspar Ariño,
who had just arrived from the United States on a Fullbright grant, had recently
been incorporated into the Department of Administrative Law at the
University of La Laguna. He was an expert in the formal relations between
academic institutions and research centres, so I wasted no time in seeking his
help and counsel.
I explained to him what the IAC was and where we wanted to go. I spoke
to him of our longed-for goals and possibilities, and I presented him with the
following challenge: to design an entity capable of endowing the IAC with the
necessary legal capacities, in spite of its being a Spanish institution, in order
to make it genuinely competitive on an international level. That entity would
need to possess the sufficient juridico–administrative capacity to do what we
wanted it to do, which was astrophysical research, but also to be capable of
F. Sánchez
capacity to act’. The repercussions of this step on the growth of astrophysics
were immediate.
The Institute’s novel status even influenced subsequent legal norms applied
to academic and scientific bodies throughout the country. But new ideas give
rise to suspicion and envy, and the ‘Astrophysics Law’ has had its share of flak
from way back in the eighties until the present day. The urge on the part of
civil servants in any administration to unify and standardize, with their dedication to ‘proper channels’ and ‘precedents’, was, and continues to be, another
permanent hindrance for the IAC. We shall also speak of this because it is a
persistent obstacle set up by bureaucratized administrative structures that bog
down and stifle progress in any country.
As mentioned earlier, in 1979, after years of hard negotiations, something
of major importance had been achieved: several European countries had
signed a multinational treaty for the IAC Observatories to host telescopes
from all over the world and to safeguard the construction, use, and ownership
of such advanced instrumentation. This treaty was ratified by the parliaments
of the signatory countries and remains in force and operative today, and on
this solid foundation rests the splendour of the Canarian Observatories. I
emphasize this because it had a decisive influence on the passing of the
Astrophysics Law.
After this, we understood that the time had come for us to take the definitive step in tackling the juridical formalization of the IAC that would give it
genuine capabilities of self-management and governance. We needed these
capabilities in order to exploit all the possibilities that were now open to us,
capabilities that could not be granted by the University of La Laguna, CSIC,
or the island cabildos.
It was plain to us that we needed a bold and wily legal expert able to think
outside the box. Luckily, a young legal academic, Professor Gaspar Ariño,
who had just arrived from the United States on a Fullbright grant, had recently
been incorporated into the Department of Administrative Law at the
University of La Laguna. He was an expert in the formal relations between
academic institutions and research centres, so I wasted no time in seeking his
help and counsel.
I explained to him what the IAC was and where we wanted to go. I spoke
to him of our longed-for goals and possibilities, and I presented him with the
following challenge: to design an entity capable of endowing the IAC with the
necessary legal capacities, in spite of its being a Spanish institution, in order
to make it genuinely competitive on an international level. That entity would
need to possess the sufficient juridico–administrative capacity to do what we
wanted it to do, which was astrophysical research, but also to be capable of
F. Sánchez