The History of the Spanish Society for Quaternary Research. Part III: AEQUA at the dawn of the 21st century (2006 - 2017)

Abstract

This work covers the period between 2006 and 2017, which was led by two tandems, one feminine (Bardají and Roquero; 2006-2009) and another masculine (Silva and Rodríguez-Pascua, 2010-2017). As occurred previously with the women´s tandem, the renewal of the statutes allowed the subsequent male tandem to remain in the AEQUA board for two consecutive periods, which will be extended because of the COVID-19 pandemic until 2021. During the period analysed in this article, three National Quaternary Meetings were held in Ávila (2007; Pablo G. Silva); Andorra (2011; Valentí Turú i Michels); Granada (2015; José Miguel Azañón) and other three Iberian Quaternary Meetings in Faro (2009 and 2017; Tomasz Boski y Delminda Moura) and Seville-La Rinconada (2013; Rafael Baena). The 9th Iberian Quaternary Meeting, organised by Tomasz Boski and Delminda Moura, from the University of Algarve (Faro) in 2017, was the last in the REQUI series that began in Lisbon in 1985. At the Seville REQUI (2013), the distinguished prehistorian from the University of Seville, Enrique J. Vallespí was granted with the AEQUA Golden Archer award. During this period, new AEQUA working groups were formed: El Madrileño (GQM) in 2007, promoted by P.G. Silva (USAL) and J. Baena Preysler (UAM) and Quaternary Tectonics (QTECT, 2010), promoted by M.A. Rodríguez-Pascua and R. Pérez-López (IGME). From the beginning, this new group has been involved in organising the series of Iberian Congresses on Active Faults (IBERFAULT). During this period both, AEQUA and the journal Cuaternario y Geomorfología websites were launched, the latter obtaining the RECYT Quality Mark in 2011, since been managed electronically from this institutional scientific platform. From 2009, there has been intense internationalisation work on the Spanish Quaternary sciences. The first INQUA Workshop on Paleoseismology, Archaeoseismology and Active Tectonics was organised in Baelo Claudia (Cádiz, 2009) by P.G. Silva (USAL) and K. Reicherter (RWTH Aachen). This event would be the first in the INQUA PATA Days series in which QTECT-AEQUA will actively participate in the organisation of those held in Corinth (Greece, 2011); Morelia (Mexico, 2012) and Aachen (Germany, 2013). In 2010, the INQUA Workshop ‘Decoding the Last Interglacial in Western Mediterranean’ was organised in Sardinia (Italy), led by Teresa Bardají (UAH) and Salvatore Carboni (University of Cagliari). The Spanish INQUA Committee attended the international congresses in Bern (Switzerland, 2011) and Nagoya (Japan, 2015), where Spain’s candidature was presented to propose Zaragoza as the venue for an INQUA congress in 2015 and 2019, under the direction of Blas Valero Garcés and his team at IPE (CSIC). On both occasions, the Spanish bid was unsuccessful, and no further attempts were made to the date. For this reason, in 2016, AEQUA stopped paying the INQUA membership fee, which it had been doing since 2011, due to the withdrawal of funds from the Spanish Government since then.