The vice president of the Provincial Council of Albacete, Fran Valera, presented on Wednesday the calls for grants for the Institute of Albacete Studies (IEA) at the new headquarters of the center, the Chalet Fontecha, with a total amount of 100,000 dedicated to archaeological excavations, research, Historical Memory, and institute awards.
The grants were published this morning in the Official Gazette of the Province and are divided into four lines of action.
The first, worth 40,000 euros, is focused on archaeological projects that municipalities, research groups, and universities can apply for funding of up to 7,000 euros.
Last year, seven projects in different parts of the province such as Barrax or Socovos benefited from co-financed excavations with the municipalities’ councils.
«We understand that archaeological excavation helps to strengthen the identity of a province that has a presence in all periods of history,» explained the vice president.
The second funding line amounts to 34,000 euros — 6,000 more than last year — in grants of up to 2,000 euros that research groups or individual researchers from 11 different disciplines such as geology, botany, ornithology, philology, or art history can benefit from.
The third point of aid is the research awards of the Institute of Albacete Studies, totaling 8,000 euros, divided into awards of 1,500 euros for the dissemination of works in four categories: Researchers under 35 years old, History of the Province of Albacete, Natural Sciences, and Social and Legal Sciences.
Additionally, this year two awards have been added for Bachelor’s Thesis, each with 1,000 euros, which can be submitted by university department heads.
Finally, 5,500 euros have been allocated to works dedicated to the recovery of Historical Memory related to the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist Dictatorship, in a «commitment of the Government team and the Institute to the firm compliance with the Historical Memory Law,» highlighted Valera.
The vice president specified that this year, the funding allocation for the Institute by the Provincial Council was 936,000 euros, 80,000 more than the previous year, representing «a significant exponential increase in the last decade» for what he considers «the best research and dissemination center in the province.»
Additionally, Valera noted that the new headquarters of the center, located in the iconic Chalet Fontecha, has received over 8,700 visits through guided tours, individual visits, and library use in the first four months of 2025.
«This demonstrates that the public was eager to take advantage of this emblematic building in the center of Albacete, both for its architectural value and its cultural programming,» valued the vice president.
2,700 VISITS
The director of the IEA, Antonio Caulín, highlighted the «extraordinary use» of the center’s library and archives, with 2,700 visits in these four months.
Caulín announced that in the future, they will also add a provision for Master’s Thesis, just as they have done with the Bachelor’s Thesis in this edition.
The director of the research center described the academic growth of the center in recent years as «an olive tree whose irrigation is the grants from the Provincial Council and whose harvest, which keeps growing, is the publications that we are seeing now.»