On September 21st, an unprecedented meeting of directors of Spanish quality assurance agencies with ENQA Board members (The European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) took place in Zaragoza. In the stimulating frame of the Museum of Zaragoza, Jaume Valls (Director of AQU), Eduardo López Pereira (Director of ACSUG), Salvador Rus (Director of ACSUCYL), José Saturnino Martínez (Director of ACCUEE), José Ángel Domínguez (Head of International Commission of ANECA), Raúl de Andrés (head of institutional accreditation of Madrimasd), Paula Ramis (director of AQUIB), Sebastián Chávez (director of DEVA-AAC), Iñaki Heras (director of UNIBASQ) and Javier Oliver (director of AVAP), Douglas Blackstock (QAA, UK; ENQA President), Cristina Ghitulica (ARACIS, Romania; ENQA Vice-President) and ENQA Board members, Antonio Serrano (ACPUA, Spain), Doris Herrmann (AQAS, Germany), Karena Maguire (QQI, Ireland), Jolanta Silka (AIC, Latvia), Ruben Topchyan (ANQA, Armenia) and Patrick van den Bosch (VLUHR QA, Belgium) participated in concrete in this interesting meeting. The ACPUA acted as host agency.
The conference started with welcoming remarks by Yolanda Sancho, General Director of Universities in Aragon Government, which were answered by Douglas Blackstock, President of ENQA. The Director of ACPUA, Antonio Serrano, in his turn, welcomed the colleagues of the ENQA Board on behalf of all the Spanish agencies gathered in the REACU Network. After these opening speeches, a round of presentations by Spanish directors and agencies took place, in which the main characteristics and challenges facing the external quality assurance of higher education in our country were presented. Next, José Ángel Domínguez from ANECA, the agency coordinating the Spanish network this year, presented the REACU methodology and advances in the joint drafting of the protocols that are developing the new Spanish legal framework (Royal Decree 822/2021).
In the second part of the meeting, ENQA was leading its interventions: Douglas Blackstock presented ENQA's main strategic lines and afterwards Elena Cirlan, from the ENQA Secretariat, described the main working groups, projects and activities that ENQA is currently involved in. An interesting final discussion brought the event to a well-deserved conclusion.
