There is no news about the private university that was going to open its doors in Calatayud. This project was announced in December 2022, when on the official website of the Calatayud City Hall it was indicated that the Società delle Scienze Umane had presented the project to create a university in Calatayud. However, two years later, no details about the proposal are known.
The City Council assures that the process continues its course and its processing and that in October 2023 the mayor and deputy mayor of the City Council of Calatayud, José Manuel Aranda and José Manuel Gimeno, met in Rome at the headquarters of the Società delle Scienze Umane to continue with this university project.
The council also assures that on May 22, the promoters of the university explained that the training that would be provided would be mixed, remotely and in person, and that they presented the report to the Government of Aragon. “This document has been registered for study and evaluation by the corresponding bodies of the Autonomous Executive. This process is underway and is completing the information that the DGA may request on this subject from the promoters of the university,” they explain. They also maintain that the City Council has no competence in this process since it is not a municipal file.
The Department of Education of the Government of Aragon assures that it is analyzing the documentation received and “follows the usual processing phases in accordance with current regulations” and refuses to make further statements on the matter.
On February 13, 2023, the Socialist Municipal Group requested access to the file relating to the university project, the mayor responded that at that time there was “no administrative file, no documentation has been received since the date indicated.” In response to another request for information made last September, the mayor responded that the realization of the University “corresponds to the Department of Education of the Government of Aragon.”
From the PSOE of Calatayud, its spokesperson, Sandra Marín, denounces that a presentation was made according to which “a talent company” was going to arrive in the city and that a contract of guarantee for certain plots was signed to implement this company. Later, it was learned that it was a private and distance university, which generated “discontent” in the city “because it generates less impact.”
They consider that it is an electoral “smoke bomb” and that the process has started “in the opposite direction”, first in the City Hall and then in the Government of Aragon, when an implementation of this type must first request authorizations from the Ministry of Education and the Government of Aragon, the City Hall is the last stop.
Miguel Ángel Basanta, spokesman for the CHA of Calatayud, denounced the lack of a clear position of the Department of Education, Science and Universities of the Government of Aragon, regarding the possible establishment of a private university in Calatayud. Basanta expressed his concern that “this type of announcements always obey the speculative interests of the municipal government, which lacks ideas and work to reactivate the economy, employment and urban planning of the municipality and that occur during the electoral period.”
The project
The university is planned to be located in the Azucarera Labradora facilities, opposite the Calatayud AVE station. The university is the NCI Aragón (Università Niccolo Cusano, promoted by the Società delle Scienze Umane) and the campus developer has designed a university complex on the premises of this 4,300 square meter complex consisting of three warehouses and an adjoining outdoor space of 30,000 square meters.
In the NCI Aragón University project, three faculties are initially proposed: the School of Engineering, the Faculty of Social and Legal Sciences and finally the Faculty of Health Sciences. As explained by the Calatayud City Council, this complex is private property and the Company already had an agreement with the owners at the time of presenting the initiative.
Last April, the Ministry of Education responded to a question about its knowledge of the Calatayud private university file, and assured that it had not received “any university project such as the one mentioned in the question asked, for the process of issuing” the mandatory report of the General Conference of University Policy.
