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Sustainability issues in higher educational institutions have attracted increasing levels of attention from both the public and policy makers in recent decades. A number of previous studies have called for a more comprehensive integration of sustainable development into mainstream university operations and curricula. However, there is a lack of sufficient studies that investigate sustainable development in higher education in Spain. Therefore, the present paper has two goals: First, the study analyses the extent to which Spanish universities have implemented sustainability practices in their institutions. To accomplish this task, data were collected using a survey distributed to rectors and senior management at Spanish higher education institutions. The second goal is to examine the main factors that might explain the implementation of sustainability practices in Spanish universities. For this purpose, Pearson chi-square tests were used to analyse the data collected in the survey. Key findings show the slow rate of progress of many Spanish universities with regard to implementing sustainability practices, a fact which could indicate that there are clearly a number of obstacles to overcome. Additionally, there were no factors influencing the implementation of sustainability practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]