The municipality of Majadahonda (Community of Madrid) will host the administrative headquarters of the State Consortium in Network for the Development of Drugs of Advanced Therapies (CERTERA), which will be complemented by a headquarters for scientific direction in Barcelona (Catalonia).

The decision has been taken by the Council of Ministers following the recommendation made by the Advisory Commission for the determination of the headquarters of the public institutional state sector, which considers that the candidacy of Majadahonda presents a differential structural and strategic advantage for hosting the campus of the Carlos III Health Institute, a public research agency dependent on the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

Overall, it is the candidacy that best articulates scientific excellence, with immediate operability and alignment with the strategic objectives of the consortium.

The previous election is complemented by the extraordinary capacity represented by the candidacy of Barcelona, based on scientific leadership, integration into an innovation ecosystem, an accredited regulatory and clinical experience and the concentration of funding, by contributing the Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (Hospital Clínic Barcelona) with 64% of the state funding allocated to the CERTERA Consortium. Therefore, the administrative headquarters will be complemented by a scientific management headquarters.

With this proposal, it is guaranteed to take advantage of the differentiated strengths of each headquarters:

• Majadahonda concentrates administrative coordination and institutional dialogue from the ISCIII.
• Barcelona leads the scientific direction and multicentric trials from its powerful biomedical ecosystem.

This model strengthens territorial cohesion by distributing functions between two autonomous communities, improves operational resilience by supporting the consortium in two infrastructures of excellence, and extends the capacity to attract and retain talent thanks to the labor and mobility advantages of both environments.

In addition, having two reference nodes in Madrid and Barcelona enhances CERTERA’s capillarity within a network of 44 entities, facilitating a more agile and balanced transfer of knowledge to the system as a whole.

Procedure for choosing the seat

The creation of a center dedicated to advanced therapies was included in the measures of component 17 of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), dedicated to institutional reform and strengthening the capacities of the national system of science, technology and innovation, developed by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.

For the choice of headquarters, Royal Decree 209/2022 has been applied, which establishes the procedure for determining the physical headquarters of entities belonging to the state institutional public sector and creates the Advisory Commission, following an objective and competitive procedure.

The Council of Ministers, at its meeting of October 28, 2025, approved the agreement that initiated the procedure for the determination of the physical headquarters of the State Consortium in Network for the Development of Drugs of Advanced Therapies (CERTERA), through the urgent processing.

The Consultative Commission for the Determination of the Headquarters of State Institutional Public Sector Entities adopted, at its meeting of 18 November 2025, the criteria to be taken into account in determining the location and submitted the report to the Council of Ministers on 25 November 2025, published in the BOE on 26 November 2025.

In compliance with the Royal Decree that establishes the procedure for determining the physical headquarters of entities belonging to the institutional public sector, on November 27, 2025, the deadline of one month was initiated for the legislative assemblies and the governing councils of the autonomous communities, or the plenary bodies of the local entities, to submit their candidacies to the Ministry of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory.

On November 29, 2025, that deadline was met with the receipt of three nominations: Barcelona (Catalonia), Valencia (Valencian Community) and Majadahonda (Community of Madrid).