Catalonia Is Set To Launch Its Own Space Agency. Will It Fly?
By Lucía Benavides
March 17, 2021
LLEIDA, Spain — The first thing you see when you get to the Montsec Astronomical Park is a big dark metal dome: the planetarium. Behind it are three smaller white domes, housing various telescopes. Farther up a bumpy road is the Montsec Observatory. All this space gadgetry seems out of place among the earthy mountain surroundings, but the area — which has some of the darkest skies in Catalonia — has been frequented by amateur astronomers for decades.
When the observatory opened in 2008, it “was conceived as an astronomical observatory, but that was extended in 2018 as a ground station for the communication with nanosatellites,” says Josep Colomé, the Montsec Observatory’s director.