Gaia FGK benchmark stars: a bridge between spectroscopic surveys
  The Gaia benchmark stars (GBS) are very bright stars of different late
spectral types, luminosities and metallicities. They are well-known in the
Galactic archaeology community because they are widely used to calibrate and
validate the automatic pipelines delivering parameters of on-going and future
spectroscopic surveys. The sample provides us with consistent fundamental
parameters as well as a library of high resolution and high signal-to-noise
spectra. This allows the community to study details of high resolution
spectroscopy and to compare results between different survey pipelines, putting
the GBS at the heart of this community. Here we discuss some results arising
from using the GBS as main data source for spectral analyses.
