The University of Catalonia’s (PAU) Access Tests Coordinator, Pilar Gómez, who spent 20 years in this position, has left the university administration. The decision, published last July in the Diario Oficial de la Generalitat (DOGC), was issued after the publication of the controversial Selectividad magazine in which discrepancies regarding exam corrections caused unrest and confusion among students, but also among teachers. The DOGC also publishes the name of her successor: Rosa Bames.
Pilar Gómez took over as Selectivity Coordinator in 2005 and since then she has managed multiple changes to the tests and something that has been controversial, among the most recent, is giving the option to take the tests in Spanish, or to adapt the tests to a more efficient version, or how it happened last June, covering the correction criteria, in particular, if you exclude spelling errors.
Gómez specifically sparked controversy during the press conference for Selectividad’s 2025 bid, alongside the head of the University Access Office, Mónica Garizoen. They both insisted that the lack of orthography remained only in the signatures of language and literature. The statement contradicts the instructions published by the Department of Universities on its website, which stipulated leaving up to 10% of the exam grade in “all subjects,” with the exception of language and literature grades, which amount to 20%. In the end, the university advisor, Nuria Montserrat, was forced to come out and explain the situation.
From the first moment, the administration wanted to remove the controversy and ensure that the standards were not modified. But the council admitted, in an interview with this newspaper a month ago, that there was a “serious communication error that caused a lot of confusion.” The universities distance themselves from this incident and confirm that the coordinator has enough time to leave her position due to “fatigue.”
Rosa Bames Vila, Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, has been appointed Head of the PAU. The name was approved at an extraordinary meeting of the Board of Directors of the Council of Universities of Catalonia on 11 November. According to the Ministry, since 2011 Bamis has been linked to the preparation of the PAU in various positions – auditor, security guard or court president – and since 2019 she has been responsible for the subject of industrial technology.