Villamandos highlights in Parliament that this activity is strategic for Andalusia due to its transformative capacity for the economy and the labor market and for its attraction of business investments
The Department of University, Research and Innovation of the Junta de Andalucía allocates an amount of 72 million euros to the aerospace sector through different public aid programs and actions with the aim of promoting its innovation and continuing to contribute to its transformative capacity for the Andalusian economy. This was stated by Councilor José Carlos Gómez Villamandos in the plenary session of Parliament, where he stressed that this activity will be decisive in making the regional economy stronger, more sustainable and more attractive for companies.
In his speech, Gómez Villamandos outlined the various lines of work launched by his department, ensuring that the first of them, the ‘Space Innova Andalucía’ program, will have at least 20 million in incentives from FEDER Funds. This initiative seeks to identify innovative technological solutions in the Space sector to apply them in areas of activity managed by the Regional Administration related to the deployment of emergencies, the fight against fires, environmental management or statistical and cartographic analysis.
The action will be carried out through the Public Procurement of Innovation (CPI) formula, which is a novel contracting system with which the Administration aims to satisfy a need for advanced services and products not yet available in the market by encouraging responses of private initiative. The head of University has explained that this amount could be increased by 14.6 million more, since a request for that amount has been made to the Line for the Promotion of Innovation from Demand (FID Line) for the Public Purchase of Innovation, which is funded by FEDER Funds and coordinated through the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
Likewise, the Regional University Department has reserved a global budget of 20 million from the FEDER Andalusia 2021-2027 Program for the operation and development of the Center for Innovation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Urban Air Mobility of Seville (CUAM), which has been transferred since 2023 and will be completed in 2025. The infrastructure, promoted jointly with the University of Seville, will focus on generating knowledge that allows maintaining the scientific and technological leadership of Andalusia in unmanned aerial vehicle technologies for civil uses. Furthermore, the center aims to promote the transfer of knowledge to companies, strengthening the Andalusian aeronautical industry and enabling it to diversify into new products, all of them with a high added value far superior to the traditional manufacturing of aerostructures.
Added to this are at least 15 million FEDER Funds allocated by the Regional University Department to support the participation of the Junta de Andalucía in the European ‘Clean Aviation’ program, which aims to promote the development of more sustainable aviation with fewer emissions and noise. In this action, companies must develop an industrial research or experimental development project and may participate alone or in cooperation with other companies and with Andalusian knowledge agents.
On the other hand, Gómez Villamandos has also referred to the Center for Testing, Training and Assembly of Unmanned Aircraft (CEUS), which is promoted by the regional Executive together with the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) in the province of Huelva and which is about to open. This scientific-technical infrastructure will be used to test and certify medium and large-sized unmanned aircraft, something unique in all of Europe for this type of vehicle. The investment of the Regional Ministry in this project amounts to about 17 million, of which almost six million have been used in the underground works of the high tension line that crosses the tracks of the enclave and the remaining eleven million correspond to the value of the land transferred to INTA.
Likewise, the Junta de Andalucía is finalizing with the Seville City Council and the Advanced Center for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC) the preparation of the agreement that will include the creation and operation of an incubator for entrepreneurial companies in space matters of the European Space Agency (ESA), initiative in which the Regional Administration participates with a contribution of 504,000 euros.
A strategic segment for Andalusia
The head of University wanted to emphasize that the aerospace sector has “a strategic nature” for Andalusia due to its specific weight in the whole balance of production, for the traction it exerts on the innovative ecosystem and other areas, for its transformative role in the economy and the labor market and, especially, for its ability to reinvest a large part of its profits in R&D+I actions. Likewise, for the counselor this economic activity “has an undoubted potential to attract investments” and he has given as significant examples of this the Pilatus project in Carmona (Seville) or the Zhensi project in El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz).
This industry, as highlighted by Gómez Villamandos, generates more than 13,000 jobs in the community, represents 1.2 points of the regional GDP and, in addition, “currently has a turnover almost three times more than fifteen years ago, it generates twice as much employment than a decade ago and leads the ranking of Andalusian exports.”
Due to this relevance, he has assured that his department is committed to this segment “in a clear and decisive manner, through the Aerospace Strategy of Andalusia”, and also through the future academic programming of public universities in order to continue improving professional qualifications of the human resources dedicated to this activity. With this planning, three new master’s degrees focused on the space sector will be implemented, one of them at the University of Granada and another two at the University of Seville. In terms of training, the new Integrated Aerospace Vocational Training Center of La Rinconada (Seville) is also added to this university offer, which aspires to be a national reference in the maintenance and construction of aircraft.
