Although Spain is taking part in the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble , where it has two of its own lines, it is one of the larger European countries that has no facility of its own. What's more, of the dozen facilities of this type that there are in Europe all are located north of a line that runs from Paris to Trieste . This means that Spanish users, if they want to use this tool, have to make long journeys and use foreign facilities in a parasitic manner.
Synchrotron light has certain properties that make it very special. Apart from its extraordinary intensity, it has continuous spectrum (reaching wave lengths from infrared to x-ray), it is emitted in a shape like a paintbrush with a very thin tip, and it is polarised and emits very short impulses separated in time by very precise periods. These properties make it indispensable for many scientists.
The absence of this type of scientific facility across such an extensive area led the Generalitat, in 1992, to decide to take the initiative to construct one. To this end it created a laboratory Promotion Committee, initiated a staff training plan and hired a director. This team made a detailed study of the facility, designed its fundamental pieces and commissioned the construction of the most important prototypes from Spanish companies. In 1995, an agreement was signed with the Spanish government, beginning a collaboration that was strengthened in 2002 when the two governments signed an intention protocol that established a commitment to construct a third generation facility at Cerdanyola del Vallès of the type that had been designed. In July 2003 the synchrotron light laboratory Construction, Equipping and Usage Consortium (CELLS) was formed and in September of that year work began on building ALBA which, according to initial specifications, was to have had five experimental lines in its first phase.
Since then, under the direction of the Management Council, co-led by the heads of the relevant Ministry and Department, the project has come a long way: a suitable location has been found (after a careful geotechnical survey), an executive project for the buildings has been drawn up, all the parts for the accelerators have been designed and the human team, who are working out of temporary buildings on the campus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, has been brought together. At the moment building work is progressing and a good part of the synchrotron equipment has been designed and ordered from Spanish and foreign firms. It is thought that the building which has to house the facility will be finished in the summer of 2008 and that the synchrotron light source, now with two additional experimental lines, will come on stream at the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010.

The building site and model of the future ALBA synchrotron

Synchrotron light is a tool used increasingly frequently in many fields of both basic and applied research. Until the 1960s, the main and almost the only users of synchrotron light were physicists but, since then, the situation has changed significantly and many new applications have emerged in fields such as chemistry, biology, environmental sciences and even art.