London

Researchers in Spain are optimistic that the newly elected government there will implement a bold pledge to double research spending. And they hope that it will also address problems that have fostered growing discontent on the nation's university campuses.

The socialist party of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which scored a surprise election win on 14 March, promised in its manifesto to double Spain's €4-billion (US$4.8-billion) annual research and development budget by 2008. It also said that it would recombine the science and technology ministry with the education ministry, and set up a research council to distribute grants on the basis of scientific merit.

Jaime Díez Lissavetzky, a chemist and socialist party member of parliament, who is helping to formulate the incoming government's science policy, says that the pledges will be implemented quickly.

In budget terms, science did not fare badly under the previous, conservative government led by José Aznar. Its total research and development budget surged by an average of 13% each year from 1997 to 2003, according to European Commission figures — the second-fastest growth rate in the European Union.

But scientists have been concerned about the low proportion of public money going into basic research and have protested over funding and the career prospects of young people.

The plan to merge the science and technology ministry back into the education department — the two were separated in 2000 — has drawn mixed responses from researchers, some of whom have been disappointed by what they regard as the ministry's focus on technology.

Emilio Gelpí, director of the Spanish research council's institute for biomedical research in Barcelona, says that the previous ministry was too involved in technological issues, such as telecommunications, to do much for science. Juan Belmonte, a geneticist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, who collaborates closely with stem-cell researchers in Spain, says that he has mixed feelings about the combined ministry. But he adds that it has the potential to strengthen science in the universities, as well as its ties with industry.