Academic ranks in Spain

Academic ranks in Spain are the titles, relative importance and authority of professors, researchers, and administrative personnel held in academia.
Overview.
According to the Spanish Organic University Law, the following are the academic ranks in Spain:
Administrative ranks
Faculty.
Selection procedures.
In the past twenty-five years, Spain has gone through three university reforms: 1983 (Ley de Reforma Universitaria, LRU), 2001 (Ley Orgánica de Universidades, LOU) and 2007 (a mere reform of the LOU with several specific modifications of the 2001 Act). We can name them LRU 1983, LOU 2001 and LOU 2007.
The actual categories of tenured and untenured positions, and the basic department and university organization, were established by LRU 1983, and only specific details have been reformed by LOU 2001 and LOU 2007. The most important reform these later acts introduced is the way candidates to a position are selected. According to LRU 1983, a committee of five members had to evaluate the curricula of the candidates. A new committee was constituted for each new position, operating in the same university offering that position. These committees had two members appointed by the department (including the Secretary of the Committee), and three members who were draw-selected (from any university, but belonging to the same "knowledge area").
The LOU 2001 and LOU 2007 acts have granted even more freedom to universities when choosing applicants for a position. Each university now freely establishes the rules for the creation of an internal committee that assigns available positions. However, the last reform also have introduced an external "quality control" process. To better understand these reforms, it is worth examining the situation both before and after 2007.
The situation before 2007 was this: LOU 2001 had established a procedure, based on competition at national level, to become a civil servant. This procedure, and the license a candidate obtained, was called "habilitación", and it included curricula evaluation and personal examinations. The external committee was formed by seven draw-selected members (belonging to the same "knowledge area" and fulfilling requisites related to research curricula), who could assign a fixed and pre-determined number of "habilitaciones" similar to the positions requested by the universities. An applicant to a particular position in any university had to be "habilitado" (licensed) by this National Committee in order to apply. Non-civil servants had a slightly different "quality control" process. A specific institution, called the Spanish Agency for Evaluation, Quality and Certification or ANECA by its Spanish acronym (), examined the applicants' curricula and issued them a positive evaluation called "acreditación" (certification) giving access to the exams to become a tenured-civil servant professor.
Today, following the LOU 2007 reform, the whole process has been simplified, and both civil and non civil servants need to achieve a positive evaluation of their teaching and research record by ANECA. Once the certification by ANECA is achieved, candidates can apply for the exams convened by each university to fulfill their vacant positions.
The certification system introduced by the LOU 2001 act and particularly the 2007 reform, which requires the candidate to pass a demanding evaluation process at a national level for each category before applying for a position, has increased the standards of Spanish university professors to those of most OECD countries.
The LOU act of 2001 maintained both traditional tenured and civil servant positions of "Profesor Titular" and "Catedrático de Universidad", albeit it also introduced the new non-civil servant tenured position of Professor Contratado Doctor (equivalent to a "reader" in the UK). Non-tenured positions include: Professor Asociado (a part-time instructor who keeps a professional career, for example in the industry, in a hospital or media), Ayudante (a doctoral student working as teaching assistant, with limited and supervised teaching capacity), and Professor Ayudante Doctor (a promotion from the latter, after completing the doctoral dissertation).
Positions.
Under present legislation (LOU 2007), only the following positions are available:
On those positions, one can be Head or hold a Chair if they are elected by their faculty or departments for it.
Teaching staff positions continue to exist in certain categories (Profesor Titular de Escuela Universitaria, Profesor Colaborador) that have been abolished, but there is no new recruitment in these categories.
Of these six categories of tenured positions, four imply public service positions ("funcionario"):
The "Catedrático de Escuela Universitaria" and the "Profesor Titular de Universidad" categories have been merged by the LOU 2007 reform. The two "de Escuela Universitaria" categories were intended mainly for teachers of previous three-year degrees (e.g. technical engineering, nursing, teaching in primary schools), while the two "de Universidad" categories include professors of any undergraduate or graduate degrees.
Retirement.
The retiring age for university professors in Spain is 65, just like all other workers. However, a university professor can work until he or she is 70, if he so wishes. Even then, they can apply for a Professor Emérito position. It is a non-tenured position and it has a limited duration (4 additional years). Also, there are specific rules established by each university.
Foreign qualifications in Spain.
Spain places the following requirements for recognition of non-European qualifications:
Research-only positions.
There also exist permanent, research positions, without teaching duties. They are offered by certain public research institutions, the Public Scientific and Technical Research Establishments, for instance the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC). Again, people in these positions are civil servants (thus, in this sense, tenured). Their statute is governed by the Spanish Laws. 
There are three levels:
The main differences between these research positions and the faculty positions are, of course, the absence of teaching duties, and the ability to move between different labs (for example, a CSIC researcher can request to move to any CSIC center in Spain or abroad, whereas a faculty member is employed by a specific university).