218
Minister for Education of Science at the time, and therefore President of the
Governing Council, was Jerónimo Saavedra, one of the great Canarian politicians of the Transition. Luckily, he was a friend from the days when we were
both untenured lecturers at the University of La Laguna and was wellacquainted with the IAC.
Before this, the Government had created the Assessorial Committee for
Large Scientific Facilities, whose task was to analyse our telescope project.
They were extremely reticent, for neither they nor anybody else in Madrid
really believed us capable of building such an instrument in Spain (our atavistic complexes surfacing once again). They ended by recommending that the
Government give the project the go-ahead on three conditions: that there be
international participation, that the director of the project be a foreigner with
proven experience in this kind of telescope, and that the necessary funding be
secured before proceeding with the project. All very logical and prudent, but
it left the project dead in the water.
However, in parallel we managed to convince the Ministry of Industry and
the corresponding board of industry of the Canarian Government to earmark
funds to award ‘trial contracts’ for the technology required for the large telescope. In this way, we were able to demonstrate that our firms had the required
capabilities; we assembled a significant group of Spanish companies to participate in the international bidding that we would need to arrange for fabrication if we were finally to build the telescope.
With the arrival of Esperanza Aguirre as the new Minister for Education
and Culture, things took a turn for the worse. I can remember only too well
when, on 13 July 1998, before an IAC Governing Council meeting, she
invited me, together with Professor César Nombela (then president of CSIC)
to have lunch at her private ministry dining room. It was a carefully laid trap
to persuade me not to proceed with the project; they tried every trick in the
book. We spent hours arguing until Aguirre brought the meeting to a close
with her customary high-handedness and sardonic humour, ‘You’ll never get
that telescope built, my lad!’ I am mystified as to where she and the CSIC
President had got such an idea of the presumptuousness and inconvenience of
the project. Some years later Nombela himself told me who had persuaded
him of the need to prevent at all costs the construction in the Canaries of that
‘unnecessary and impossible monster’. But I have never engaged in the habits
of gossip and back-stabbing, so I refrain from repeating the name here. In
fact, that very same person, later occupying a very influential post, was also
among those who convinced the Minister Garmendia (and she, President
Zapatero) of the ‘impossibility and political inconvenience’ of defending the
F. Sánchez
Minister for Education of Science at the time, and therefore President of the
Governing Council, was Jerónimo Saavedra, one of the great Canarian politicians of the Transition. Luckily, he was a friend from the days when we were
both untenured lecturers at the University of La Laguna and was wellacquainted with the IAC.
Before this, the Government had created the Assessorial Committee for
Large Scientific Facilities, whose task was to analyse our telescope project.
They were extremely reticent, for neither they nor anybody else in Madrid
really believed us capable of building such an instrument in Spain (our atavistic complexes surfacing once again). They ended by recommending that the
Government give the project the go-ahead on three conditions: that there be
international participation, that the director of the project be a foreigner with
proven experience in this kind of telescope, and that the necessary funding be
secured before proceeding with the project. All very logical and prudent, but
it left the project dead in the water.
However, in parallel we managed to convince the Ministry of Industry and
the corresponding board of industry of the Canarian Government to earmark
funds to award ‘trial contracts’ for the technology required for the large telescope. In this way, we were able to demonstrate that our firms had the required
capabilities; we assembled a significant group of Spanish companies to participate in the international bidding that we would need to arrange for fabrication if we were finally to build the telescope.
With the arrival of Esperanza Aguirre as the new Minister for Education
and Culture, things took a turn for the worse. I can remember only too well
when, on 13 July 1998, before an IAC Governing Council meeting, she
invited me, together with Professor César Nombela (then president of CSIC)
to have lunch at her private ministry dining room. It was a carefully laid trap
to persuade me not to proceed with the project; they tried every trick in the
book. We spent hours arguing until Aguirre brought the meeting to a close
with her customary high-handedness and sardonic humour, ‘You’ll never get
that telescope built, my lad!’ I am mystified as to where she and the CSIC
President had got such an idea of the presumptuousness and inconvenience of
the project. Some years later Nombela himself told me who had persuaded
him of the need to prevent at all costs the construction in the Canaries of that
‘unnecessary and impossible monster’. But I have never engaged in the habits
of gossip and back-stabbing, so I refrain from repeating the name here. In
fact, that very same person, later occupying a very influential post, was also
among those who convinced the Minister Garmendia (and she, President
Zapatero) of the ‘impossibility and political inconvenience’ of defending the
F. Sánchez