"Science can help overcome the economic crisis with new ideas if we keep investing in generating knowledge and innovation", (according to 5 scientists awarded with Field Medals, 48 with Nobel Prizes and 130,000 citizens).

We have joined our voices to demand that political leaders of our country change the smothering policies that they have imposed on research. We woefully confirm, by analyzing the budget for 2013, that the money allocated to fund research continues to dimish (7,22% less than in 2012), setting us back to the levels of 2005. All of this while, at the same time, the Ministry of Revenue turns yet another screw in the R&D system, inexplicably delaying its payments, cancelling grants that had already been assigned, incorrectly stating that the objectives of deficit of the Autonomous Communities had not been met, delaying the calls for projects for 2013 and imposing policies for hiring that are destroying the careers of young researchers, whose education is the result of so many sacrifices and so much public funding.

We regret and disaprove of the miscommunication between Ministries and between the Government and the Autonomous Communities in the management of the R&D&I of the State. More specifically, the severe and unjustifiable delays in the announcement of calls for hiring of researchers (Ramón y Cajal, Juan de la Cierva, Torres Quevedo and other programs) and the alarming reduction of the pre-PhD programs. The prosperity of the scientific and technological system of our days depends on young researchers more than on anything else: people who, facing a complete lack of oportunities and appreciation, abandon their studies or their country. It is very hard to lure talented people if we cannot retain them afterwards".

This heartbreaking scene, the unexplicable complexity of the processes of justification of the research projects, given by the funding public entities and by the still not discussed need to change the law that regulates grants to adapt it to the national system of R&D&I, distract researchers from their work, making the take part in audits and resources that, additionally, are collapsing the administrative systems of management of research and the legal services of the Spanish universities. All of this is resulting in a reduction of the efficiency of the national system of R&D&I, sadly based on mistrust. A mistrust that is at the foundations of the limited role attributed to the university, despite it generating the majority of research in our country.

Mistrust and lack of funding hardly fit the creation of commissions and new rankings in which the Spanish university could, "at last", appear among the Top 100 in the world. We adamantaly affirm that we the universities would be willing to perform the necessary, and responsible, changes that would make the university system more competitive and efficient, and more solid and specialized in the dissemination of knowledge. In order to achieve this, it is necessary that the Government prioritizes and stabilizes the investment in education and R&D&I, giving it flexibility and dettaching it from the current economic situation. It is essential. The country will not be able to resist for a long time if the R&D&I system and higher education are not rescued urgently, without any shade of doubt two of the pillars on which our future must be built.