Systems of Higher Education in an international Comparison: Spain<title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="../CSS/2col_leftNav.css" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div id="masthead"> <h1 id="siteName"> Systems of Higher Education in an international Comparison: Spain</h1> <h1 id="subTitle">Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Universidad Carlos III, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia</h1><div id="globalNav"> <a href="../educationalsystem/school.html">Educational System</a> | <a href="../universitylife/living.html"> University Life</a> | Work | <a href="../madrid/geography.html">Madrid</a> | <a href="../valencia/valencia.html">Valencia</a>| <a href="../authors.html">Authors</a></div> </div>  <div id="content"> <h2 id="pageName"> My Personal Experiences @ AENA </h2> <div class="story"> <p> To conclude this chapter about working in Madrid / Spain, I’d like to comment a little on my experience while working for <a href="http://www.aena.es">AENA</a>.</p> <p> <img src="images/aena.png" /></p> <p> AENA is a state-owned public company operating 47 Spanish airports and 16 more airports outside of Spain. This makes AENA world’s biggest airport operator. Besides, the company holds Spanish ATC (air traffic control) and has a research and development section.</p> <p> As for my concerns, I worked as a part-time intern at the Division for the Development of the Air Navigation System (<i>División de Desarrollo del Sistema de Navegación Aérea</i>). It’s part of the R&D section of AENA and is doing mainly research regarding future air traffic flow and control scenarios be it on the ground (airports) or in the air, be it national or international. I found the internship through COIE and got accepted after a telephone very short telephone interview and a larger personal interview in Spanish and English. I came to AENA together with two more interns, one Spanish, one French. And that’s also the first thing I did really like about this internship: The whole team in this division is quite international. Among Spanish employees, there were people from France, Italy and the United States and Serbia who had formerly been working for Eurocontrol, EADS, Airbus or NASA. Besides, many of the projects of this division are related to or done in cooperation with foreign companies, among them being Eurocontrol and German air traffic control (DFS). That did really create sort of an international flair. Nevertheless, the everyday language of communication has been Spanish. Though I must admit, the average level of English skills tends to be above Spanish standards in this division.</p> <p> Now as you may already suspect, most things in this division are about planning, organization and simulation. Personally I’ve been working on different projects in the field of web programming (basically visualization), simulation of future air traffic, the analysis of real air traffic data and some small translation tasks (Spanish – English). But besides just working there, there was something that really surprised me.</p> <p> The three of us interns received about four weeks of training and introduction to the projects of the division. During the first four weeks of the internship, every one to three days we received talks from various people from the division telling us about their projects. Thus we got to know every project that had been done at this division. In addition there’s been an e-learning program about air navigation, air traffic control and the history and conception of AENA that we were supposed to go go through. Finally we even got a chance to visit Madrid’s air traffic control center from where half of the Spanish air space is being controlled and <a href="http://www.indra.es">INDRA</a>’s plant in Madrid where radar technology, air communication technology and parts of the Eurofighter jet are being developed and manufactured. Thus the internship was not just working for AENA and getting paid for it but in the sense of a real internship or more precisely a scholarship also learning something while being there.</p> <p> Finally there are two more things I’d like to mention about working in Spain that I also experienced during my internship at AENA. The first one is eating! Talking about breakfast or lunch, Spanish people tend to that together, extensively and in extremely good mood. I guess there’s of course exceptions to that but this is just something that really matches the Spanish temper and mentality. In my case, almost every day we went in a group of 5 to 12 people to a small, nearby bar to take a coffee and something to eat, without any hurry, stress or any sign of bad mood. Now the second thing is more of an official thing. Many companies in Madrid have different working times during summer and winter. This basically means that during summer your leave out lunch (or do it really quick) and go home two or three hours earlier while during winter (and the rest of the year) you try to make up the time lost during summer. This concept is to deal with the great heat you get in Madrid during the months of summer and goes by the term ‘<i>jornada intensiva</i>’.</p> <div id="Div1"> <em>Author: <a href="http://www.juergentreml.de/">Jürgen Treml</a></em></div> </div> </div>  <div id="navBar"> <div id="sectionLinks"> <h3> Working in Spain</h3> <ul> <li><a href="internship.html">Internships & Scholarships</a></li> <li><a href="jobentry.html">Jobs & Job Entry</a></li> <li>Personal Experience @ AENA</li> </ul> </div> <div class="relatedLinks"> <h3> Related Links</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.aena.es/" target="_blank">AENA</a></li> </ul> </div> </div>  <div id="siteInfo"> (C) 2008, Stefan Edbauer, Arno Scherhorn, <a href="http://www.juergentreml.de/">Jürgen Treml</a> </div> <br /> <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? 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