as soon as it was informed of the provisional authorization for 32,000 euros. "Since our institution and region met deficit requirements, we took the money that Alcalá University advanced us so we could carry on with our work last summer."

It so happens that the Finance Ministry did not consider regional deficit figures from 2012 (which are still not definitive) but from 2011, when nearly all the regions were over the mark. It is widely expected that most regional governments will, in fact, meet their 2012 targets, save a few exceptions such as Catalonia.

"It is a decision that penalizes university research using regional deficit as an excuse and ignoring the constitutional principle of autonomy for the universities," says Pedro Castro-Martínez, a professor at Barcelona's Autónoma. His project, which datesback to 2005, focuses on the communities in the area of La Puntilla mountains, near the famous city of Nazca in Peru, home of the famous geoglyphs known as the Nazca Lines. There are American, Japanese, German, Italian and French teams there as well, nearly always with more resources than themselves.

"Given the complexity of organizing a campaign of archeological digs in Peru, we had already launched the working plan and had been planning our campaign since November," he explains. "Now we have had to put it on hold and we came off looking decidedly bad. Besides that, the discontinuity of the project affords a very negative image of Spanish science and archeology projects abroad." As well as the purely scientific aspects, the loss of the 20,000-euro grant has