Without knowing whether the Basque Government is going to have budgets for 2013, we already know that the research bag is going to be reduced. The largest research group in the Basque Country, Tecnalia, has already announced that it will take personal and economic measures to adapt to the new situation: people on the streets and lowering wages.

Some researchers working at the university have also pointed out that, in addition to the crisis, the innovative air coming from the world will drive their activity towards applied research.

The new space to be organised for research will be based on the relationships between companies and research centres, i.e. applied research (applied to the real economy) will be promoted, although it is not yet known to what extent.

There is another type of research, the so-called basic research, which has been carried out so far, but which seems to be running out of or almost without funding from now on. This type of research has been carried out by each research centre on the basis of its own dreams and interests, and I must admit that it has been very difficult to measure its results; moreover, I have sometimes considered that there has been an excessive distance between our society and this type of research.

As we are in a crisis situation, it does not seem very wrong to extend the space to applied research and to reduce resources to basic research, but there are risks and especially for those of us who are small, for those of us who work in Basque, for those of us who want to live in Basque.

To the extent that the research is applied, the interests of the research market at every moment will decide which research is encouraged and which are left behind. So the real economy will send stronger in research, but in the real economy we know what it is, who has the resources to invest in research and who doesn't have them. So it is clear that the technological sphere will prevail to the detriment of the cultural or the humanist, and that the large interest groups will have thirty-one hands, provided that the mere rule that is applied is economic.

We, the smaller ones, have had room for the last ten years, but if that space has been created it has been because the political criteria that have allowed us to work in Euskera have been reconciled.

Now, we are more than ten years old who want to live in Euskera, and if we want to have more in ten years’ time, we will have to maintain a framework of research, applied mainly, but fundamental to its extent. Above all, so that what you can dream of today can be put on the road to reality tomorrow.