"For me, the University of Navarra is a good center, and that is what matters, regardless of ideologies". So confesses, in an interview published by Diario Médico on January 23, José Mª Mato, president of the CSIC (committee Superior Council for Scientific Research) between 1992 and 1996, and currently professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Navarra.

Dr. Mato, who states in the interview "feeling socialist, although not party", explains that in the Pamplona campus "the work is interesting and the President seems to me an intelligent man who has opted for the research. If there is a good work and good people, I do not discriminate. I only do so if I meeting intolerant people".

The scientist adds that in the U.S. working for institutions of a different ideology from one's own "is not a problem. You can collaborate in a Mormon, Jewish or Jesuit university, regardless of your beliefs. And you have to take into account that I consider my university to be that of Leiden (Holland), theoretically secular, but immersed in a Calvinist society".

He says that, during his time at this Dutch university, they celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the expulsion of the Spaniards: "The Dean told me that they thought I might be upset, but I explained to them that I had no problem," he says in the aforementioned interview.

A tie is not necessary to work in the laboratory

When he left the presidency of the CSIC, he spent another year doing research at this institution where he is a professor at research. It was then that he met people in charge of the University of Navarra: "They called me to advise them on a project researcher . I took the documentation they provided me with me to study it during a trip to the USA and I found it very interesting. So much so that, instead of advising, I found myself being part of project".