The battle to expand the offer of the Medicine degree in the Community seems to be open and that, at least, there are three provinces that aspire to join Salamanca and Valladolid to teach this degree in great demand among new university students. Along with León, who has aspired to achieve this degree for two decades, now Soria and Burgos have also applied. The first, through the group of voters Soria ya!, which has presented a non-legal proposal in the Cortes and a collection of signatures to recover these studies and, the second, with the explicit support of the PSOE that continues to take steps to that Burgos can implement this title in a context already marked by the holding of the next elections.
After the general secretary of the autonomous socialists, Luis Tudanca, demanded in September the creation of the Faculty of Medicine for his city, Burgos, —although he later backed down and the following month advanced a socialist initiative on the creation of two new faculties of Medicine in Burgos and León—, yesterday, the provincial secretary of the Burgos PSOE, Esther Peña, demanded that the Education Council of the Junta convene the Council of Universities to assess the request for a Medicine school for Burgos. It is precisely the Council of Universities, “the collegiate body for consultation and advice for university programming, organization and planning” and in which the implementation of new titles is decided, although it is the Agency for the Quality of the University System of Castilla and León the one that values the reports presented by the universities.
Esther Peña from Burgos accused the two parties that govern Castilla y León, PP and Vox, of “not wanting to start the debate on this historic proposal” and considered that this was appreciated when, while making ambiguous statements, they voted against the proposal formulated by the PSOE with the objective in the Cortes of Castilla y León so that the title of Medicine was implanted in both the León and Burgos campuses.
León continues to wait for a standard-bearer who, beyond all the work being carried out by the academic institution to get the long-awaited title implemented, is capable of pulling the strings before the Board to convince and get the University of Leon to achieve this aspiration which is also one of the titles with the most demand in recent years at the national level. Against it already has the rector of the University of Salamanca, Ricardo Rivero, who shortly after the Leonese rector, Juan Francisco Marín spoke out to claim Medicine, criticized the petition and urged the Board to invest more in his Medicine degree because León had to settle for Veterinary, since both are two of the most economically demanding degrees.
Faced with the contention of the Junta de Castilla y León to expand the offer of the degree of Medicine, in other autonomies such as Andalusia this title is taught, from this same course, in seven of the eight Andalusian provinces and Huelva, which is still in the one that is not taught has already advanced that it will request it. Between Valladolid and Salamanca in Castilla y León, 360 places were offered for this course out of the nearly 7,300 that are taught in fifty faculties throughout Spain, with large concentrations in Madrid and Barcelona.
The moment now is key, since different associations linked to the health profession demand that the places be expanded to be able to train more doctors in the face of the crisis of existing personnel in the health system and that it will worsen with the next retirements, taking into account that the training of a doctor is a long process, of a minimum of six years.