Our contribution to this symposium is to consider the key issues and debates concerning the governance and management of Spanish public universities and to provide a comparison with the UK. Our aims for this paper are threefold; firstly, to present an overview of the Spanish and UK systems of public universities, secondly, to characterise leadership and management of these two university systems and thirdly, to discuss the new challenges in the governance of public universities and the key debates and dilemmas being faced as a result of shifts to new neo-liberal forms of governance and management, often characterised as ‘new managerialism’. The paper will primarily draw on the results of a study that analyze the principal dilemmas facing governance at public universities in Spain. The key findings from this study will be compared with current research studies in the UK. A discussion of university governance and management will be given drawing on findings from this study. An analysis of management in universities can be given in three ways; firstly, that manager-academics are elected by the teaching staff; secondly, that university management is characterised by non-professionalism; and thirdly, that academic management is characterised by temporality.