One of Spain's 17 autonomous regions clashed head-on with the national government last week by announcing plans to set up and run its own public bank of human embryonic stem cell lines.

The announcement by Francisco Vallejo Serrano, head of the Health Department of the Andalusian government, triggered a direct conflict with a law approved by the Spanish Parliament on October 16 that foresees a national bank to manage and store cell lines derived from embryos left over from fertility treatments.

The conflict dates back to October of last year, when the Andalusian government announced plans to exploit a loophole in national restrictions on embryo research. It said at the time that it would launch a research center in Granada to sidestep a 1988 ban on research involving "viable embryos."

Since that law also prohibits implanting embryos more than 5 years old, Andalusian officials argue that such embryos are not viable and therefore should be accessible to researchers. On October 9, the regional parliament approved legislation that allows research on excess embryos that have remained frozen for more than 5 years.

As a first step, Vallejo stated last week, his department will establish a bank of stem cell lines to be housed in hospital centers early in 2004. In 2005, these would move to the Center of Biomedical Research, currently under construction, at the Health Sciences Campus of Granada. Vallejo also said that Andalusian researchers could start to apply for research projects involving human embryos once research grants totaling €4 million were advertised by the health department on December 2.

But the Spanish national health ministry immediately challenged Vallejo's plans on grounds that the move might violate the Spanish Constitution. Just a week after the Andalusian Parliament passed its law, the Spanish Parliament approved a reform of the 1988 national law on assisted reproduction to permit research on frozen embryos. The legislation contemplates the establishment of a reference center on regenerative medicine that will hold a national cell bank to supply cell lines to authorized researchers.

In a press conference last week in Madrid, Health Minister Ana Pastor acknowledged that the ministry had begun to study whether the regional law making possible the bank initiative was anticonstitutional.

"I understand that what is being assessed at the moment is the constitutionality of that law upon the fundamental principle that there are things in our state which constitute a basic norm for all citizens," she said.

She said there was no way she could tolerate the possibility of 17 regional laws on embryo research in the country, one for each autonomous region, a statement that seemed designed to discourage other regional governments from mimicking the Andalusian move. The next day in the Andalusian Parliament, Vallejo replied that his government was going to move forward to boost embryo research in Andalusia.

Senior researchers doubt that the regional government will prevail. Josep Egozcue, at the Department of Cell Biology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, told The Scientist that the Andalusian government cannot skip the national law on assisted reproduction. He foresees that the Spanish ministry will halt the regional initiative after appealing to courts.

"There is no way that the Anadalusian initiative can go ahead since, even though regional governments have transferred health and research powers, that law embraces the full national territory," he said.