• Support for the Government The PSOE-A leaves only its mayor in the defense of Granada as the headquarters of the Artificial Intelligence Agency

The confrontation – also in the courts – between Granada and the Government of the socialist Pedro Sanchez because of the State Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA) continues to rise, now fueled by the shadow of a 'pot' in the process of awarding the headquarters of this body to La Coruña, which nobody escapes is the hometown of the vice president and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation Nadia Calviño.

Sánchez has not managed to placate the anger of the Grenadians after snatching the AESIA, not even by giving them the headquarters in Europe of the ADIA Lab (an advanced computer center linked to the United Arab Emirates), and the claims of the mayor of Granada, the also socialist Francisco Cuenca, who demands "to know the notes of baremación" of the contest and that ensures that "from there they will not move me", they are unequivocal proof of the pulse he maintains with the State.

With municipal elections on the doorstep and the importance of having successes to capitalize on in front of the electorate, hosting the ADIA Lab – which some qualify as a consolation prize after what happened with the Artificial Intelligence agency – is very convenient for Cuenca, which had made this one of its achievements of the legislature.

Today in the city of the Alhambra there are many voices that accuse Madrid of discarding them for political reasons and of choosing 'by hand' the city of Vice President Calviño, a heavyweight within the Executive of Sánchez, and the feeling of being victims of a scam is permeating day by day among the citizens as the details of the controversial contest are known.

The Record of Shame

This week it was made public, among others, that the report by which Granada is ruled out as the headquarters of the AESIA in favor of La Coruña is dated a month and a half after making the decision, according to Ideal. Although apparently this would not be the only questionable aspect of a document, advanced by the newspaper Ideal, in which some gaps are observed that point in the direction of the 'pot' and that the association Together for Granada has described as "the file of shame".

After receiving the documentation of the contest that the Executive has sent to the Supreme Court, they have denounced that it is incomplete. "The documents accrediting the appointment of any of the members of the advisory commission are not included" that must determine the headquarters and neither the evaluation tables nor the detailed score obtained by each of the candidates appear.

The report points to the "notable problems of air connectivity" of the city and the aid offered by Granada for displaced personnel that are "clearly inferior to those of other candidacies, and in particular La Coruña", among the reasons that would have ended the possibility of this historic and university Andalusian capital to take over the headquarters of the agency.

In addition to the absence of objective assessment, it is striking issues such as that in the assessmentwith respect to La Coruña the commission takes into account its proximity to Santiago and Vigo as a plus to its connectivity, but that the same is not done in relation to Granada and its proximity to Malaga airport, the third in importance of Spain.

On December 5, the Advisory Committee met and decided to discard Grenada, until then one of the favorites, as the headquarters of the EASIA. Just a few minutes later, the Council of Ministers ratified the decision and then, on the 6th of this month, the Government's resolution was published in the Official State Gazette (BOE).

The "mangazo"

The news fell like a jug of cold water and both the citizens and the mayor himself, who had defended the Granada candidacy making it an almost personal project, put the cry in the sky. From that moment terms such as "grievance" and "mangazo" have resonated strongly not only in the street and in the surroundings of the Granada City Council, but also in that of the socialist party in this Andalusian capital.

The first to stand in front of the central government and formally ask for explanations for what it considers "a manipulated procedure" in which the headquarters of the AESIA was granted "not to the best candidate city, but to the one with the best sponsors", was the association Together for Granada, which filed an appeal on January 25 against its award to La Coruña. Just one day later, on the 26th, the secretary of the commission that advised the Executive on the candidates to host the agency signed a document with the assessment of each of the 16 candidacies.

Nor does the consistory seem willing to surrender to the decision of the State to discard them as the headquarters of the new agency and Cuenca has done more than ask for explanations in private, it has done so in public and has also gone to court in a legitimate attempt to undo the decision of the Executive and recover for Granada the headquarters of the AESIA.

"The City Council is the first defender of the rights of the people of Granada," he has repeatedly told the Cuenca press, and "we will continue to demand transparency in the scale, at the same time that we ask that what corresponds to Granada, arrives, "said the mayor this Friday, leaving aside the interests of the PSOE and betting on those of the city. Something that has been spoiled from the socialist formation itself.

Already in December, a few days after the decision was known, the secretary of Municipal Policy of the PSOE and first vice president of the Congress of Deputies, Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, defended the "transparency" with which, he assured, the central government had carried out the process of awarding the headquarters of the Agency and asked for "moderation" in its opinions to Paco Cuenca.

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  • Grenade
  • Corunna
  • Basin
  • PSOE
  • Congress of Deputies
  • Council of Ministers
  • Santiago de Compostela
  • Supreme Court
  • Pedro Sanchez
  • Nadia Calviño
  • Europe
  • Justice