When Lourdes Monterrubio finished her Marie Curie contract in Paris and applied for a Ramón y Cajal contract with the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, she did not imagine what would end up happening. This researcher in film studies already had a relationship with UPF and had collaborated with it on two projects. They agreed that she would join with a contract from the 2022 call, one of the most prestigious in the Spanish university system: it lasts five years and legally obliges the host university to create a permanent position after its completion. But her university, like others, does not want to fulfill that requirement.
The contract started on April 1, 2024. Before her incorporation, UPF had given her a stabilization commitment — signed by the Vice-Rector of Teaching and Research Staff and by the department director, which EL PAÍS has accessed — with a two-phase itinerary: first an intermediate position, tenure-track, which had to be called no later than the end of 2025; and, at the end of the contract in 2029, as an associate professor. The first step was not a promise five years ahead, but an obligation with a date and signature that the university did not fulfill. In March 2025, after complaining about a comparative grievance regarding the other Ramón y Cajal in the department, the management offered her help to transfer her contract to another entity and warned her that otherwise, the position might not be called. “Either I transfer my contract or they don’t stabilize me,” she recounts. The formal decision came in January 2026: the Faculty Commission had decided not to call the position arguing that there was no teaching need for her profile, the same one the university had signed in 2023.
UPF maintains that her teaching activity “only covers 16% of the required ordinary working day,” because it sets a minimum of 180 annual hours for permanent faculty; but that is the standard for a permanent faculty member: the law limits a Ramón y Cajal to a maximum of 100 hours and does not even require them to teach. “They respond to my appeal ignoring my Ramón y Cajal contract, which is what governs my activity,” she highlights. The AEI, for its part, responded that the commitment is only enforceable at the end of the contract, that is, in 2029.
Consulted by this newspaper, UPF denies that this case had guaranteed stabilization. “The Vice-Rector’s commitment was to make a tenure-track position available to the department no later than December 2025 so that, if the faculty commission deemed it appropriate, it would be published,” they argue. The decision not to approve it, they maintain, was made “based on objective technical and academic criteria.” The university admits that when a call contemplates stabilization, it must comply, but clarifies that others “do not establish the obligation” and have “some margin.” However, she is from the 2022 call, which does include it, and has a signed commitment.
Monterrubio is not the only one affected. On July 14 of this year, more than 30 researchers signed and delivered a letter to the Director of the State Research Agency. In it, they expressed their concern and vulnerability due to the uncertainty surrounding the stabilization of staff hired through the program. Some of the researchers “have been forced to temporarily finance their own continuity through competitive projects, seek opportunities in other countries, or leave the institution they had joined through the program,” they defend in the letter. This newspaper has learned of at least eight other similar cases, but many prefer to remain anonymous. Others leave the contract early and fall by the wayside. “The level of fear with which we live the state’s research excellence is incredible,” Monterrubio opines. Others, like Diego Lozano, were directly urged by the University of Barcelona to reject their stabilization.
From Canada to Barcelona
Something similar happened to Jordi Honey-Rosés. After eight years researching in Canada, he moved to the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) as Ramón y Cajal, linked to the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB), a center outside the department structure. His contract ends on August 31. “They tell me that if I don’t have a department, I don’t have a place for a permanent contract,” he explains. He left a position abroad to earn less than half in Spain and, four years and ten months later, the only option they offer him is a temporary contract. “They propose a contract so I don’t go unemployed. I refuse to accept less than what they had already committed to,” he clarifies. In February they warned him that they would not fulfill the stabilization: “A vice-rector told me they deceived me.”
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UAB defends that the distinguished researcher contract it offers him is a valid path to stabilization. Honey-Rosés denies it with a decisive technical nuance: a five-year contract can be indefinite, but not permanent, and the Ramón y Cajal program requires the latter. “My postdoctoral researchers have indefinite contracts,” he illustrates. The State Research Agency (AEI) itself, in a document accessed by EL PAÍS, reminds the university of its obligation to create “a permanent job position.”
Consulted by this newspaper, UAB denies non-compliance. It maintains that it offers its Ramón y Cajal stabilization through public competitions — Honey-Rosés even applied to one last October but withdrew due to distrust of the process — and that in February it proposed he become a distinguished researcher, with “salary conditions comparable to those of an associate professor.” “We are still waiting for his response to that offer,” they state, despite the researcher and 23 colleagues from his institute rejecting it in writing. He issues a challenge: that UAB show the “firm” offer it claims to have made him. “There isn’t one. The only thing we have is the minutes I wrote that afternoon, and they never responded.”
The cost of not stabilizing
How much does failing to stabilize cost? The call measures it: if the university does not create the permanent position, it must return the aid corresponding to the fifth annual installment of the contract and loses the aid intended to finance that stable position. Added to this is the compensation for the contract termination. Honey-Rosés maintains that the Vice-Rector of Academic Staff estimated the total at about 150,000 euros, an amount that — according to his account and the institute’s minutes — UAB would assume rather than stabilize him. The university denies this and assures it has offered an alternative. Asked by this newspaper whether that financial penalty is enough to deter an institution that might choose to pay it and not comply, the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities responded that the consequences “constitute a regulated mechanism.”
The Ministry of Science, responsible for the program, provides data showing that from 2012 to 2019, around 94% of the aids culminate in stabilization. Non-compliance has a price, but no consequences beyond the economic; and for a university, it may be worth paying it. According to sources from that ministry, “cases where the position is not created represent a minority and respond to diverse circumstances, so the data do not allow considering that there is a structural problem with the Ramón y Cajal Program.”
The cases of Honey-Rosés and Monterrubio share that no one takes responsibility for them. The cost, for the researcher, goes beyond their contract: they have secured European funding on their own, which allows them to move to another university and “save” their career. “Without that, I would be a postdoc, with worse conditions and with the terms unfulfilled.” Their reading is of a system that attracts researchers from outside and then does not make room for them: “Departments don’t want outsiders, they want to bring in their own.” What is at stake “is the credibility of the research system in Spain,” Monterrubio criticizes. She has secured more than 22,625 euros in funding for a project, benefiting the university that intends to dismiss her. “The defenselessness and abandonment that researchers suffer, at the mercy of the arbitrariness of the beneficiary entities, is unacceptable,” she concludes.
