This Wednesday will be a key day for the possibility of opening or not new medical schools in Castile and León. The President of the Council, Alfonso Fernández Mañuecoand the rectors of the four public universities come together at the table to evaluate advantages and disadvantages have more training centers for future doctors, which until now are only in Salamanca and Valladolid and They claim Burgos and León for themselves.
Together they must arrive to a “consensus”which is one of the conditions set by the head of the regional executive, but, in addition, interested people will have to present a “viable” project -the other requirement of the President of the Council- be able to teach the medical degree.
It is time to put the figures and projects on the table to know if the accounts add up and if the request from Burgos and León shows signs of success, both in terms of economics, as in human resources and spaces.
Mañueco repeatedly recognized the “collective illusion” that health education awakens in both cities. It is not for nothing that this diploma is one of the crown jewels of any universitybecause of the prestige it confers on the establishment, but also on the students it attracts, since it is, historically, one of the most requested lessons. But the president also assured that since the start of the race to obtain these studies, neither Burgos nor León has presented a “viable project”.
Consensus and viability
SO the Council’s yes is still in the air -It is likely that the meeting this Wednesday will not give the green light or a categorical no- and this is directly linked to the premises of “consensus” and “viability”. The journey, if it is, will be long. First, the autonomous government should give the green light to both projects. A question which is not trivial, knowing that it will be the regional administration which will have to take charge, for example, of certain matters. such as teacher funding.
From there, the proposal would have to be adopted to the Council of Universitieswhere the rectors and the Ministry of Education are located again, and from there the next step will be to present a report to the the University Quality Agency of Castilla y León, which ensures that the new faculties meet the requirements of centers of this type. To present this document, universities have a whole year and also the The ministry must know the details projects. So, at a minimum, new medical faculties would open their doors the 2026-2027 academic year.
They will also face other obstacles. The main one, that of funding. The accounts remain unclear. So, for example, the Burgos rectorate calculated some time ago that around seven million euros would be needed just for infrastructure, while the board of directors increased this figure to around 25 million and the Municipal Council, which made its own estimate, the 50 million to deploy the entire race in the capital Burgos.
A stumbling block will also be the question of faculty. Both institutions assure that they would have teachers available because they have relatively large hospitals in their cities, but some doubt that they could maintain the necessary numbers. It was the dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Valladolid, José María Fernández, who recently doubted that Burgos and León could count with “quality” teacherswhile century-old centers, like that of Valladolid, are struggling to do so.
Rural medicine
For their part, the rectors of Burgos and León, respectively Manuel Pérez and Nuria González, see as “just” and “legitimate” their request, especially with the shortage of doctors that currently exists throughout the health system. This will be one of its assets, because it will be the two institutions that hear focus on promoting rural medicineprecisely the specialty that is most lacking in health care in Castile and León, as far as study plans allow. They will also use the fact that both have faculties of health sciences, in which, according to what is said, the first courses of the diploma could be taught.
For their part, Valladolid and Salamanca have already declared that they will also offer new degrees for their universities.
It will be at the end of the meeting that the Minister of Education and the rectors themselves will report on the evolution of a meeting which will be essential for all parties to explore their positions on the future of the aspirations of León and Burgos, but probably not definitive.
