applications and approved 45 projects by universities, non-profit organizations and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), for a total 730,000 euros in subsidy money. The winners were informed of the provisional decision, which in previous years had become final soon thereafter.

The problem is that, since April 27 of last year, the Budget Stability and Financial Sustainability Law allows the Finance Ministry to block public grants to regions that fail to meet their deficit targets. As a result, this year only 15 projects out of the 45 approved ultimately got the green light from the ministry - 10 state-sponsored ones and five from national non-profits. The 30 projects from universities, which would have received a total of 494,500 euros, were all shot down.

A Finance Ministry spokesman told EL PAÍSstate funding for ongoing digs abroad represents a threat to several highly relevant projects, such as the one led by María Eugenia Aubet, professor of prehistory at Pompeu Fabra University, in Lebanon. Since 1997 Aubet has been working at the Phoenician necropolis of Tiro-Al Bass, where her team has uncovered 400 tombs dating from the ninth to the seventh centuries BC.

"For the first time, in 2013 we had obtained a permit from the Lebanese Culture Ministry to dig in the actual city of Tiro, despite strong pressure from the French and the Germans to get their hands on that site. Both the Spanish Embassy in Beirut and the Lebanese Culture Ministry gave us their support. Right now I don't know how to face reality and apologize to the