During the second half of the eighties, several researchers in Spain were paying attention to the developments of the emerging field of Chemometrics, specially inside Analytical Chemistry. It was in the ‘Chemometrics in Analytical Chemistry’, III CAC meeting, hold in Lerici (Italy) in June of 1986, where some of these initial contributions were presented. A year after, in November of 1987, in Barcelona it was organized the first Colloquium Chimiometricum Mediterraneum, which joined for the first time chemometricians mostly from Italy, France and Spain, together with some invited speakers of other European countries. This initiative was specially promoted by Prof. Michelle Forina of the University of Genova and by Prof. Enric Casassas of the University of Barcelona, and it probably gives the official birth date of Chemometrics in Spain. In June of 1996, a very successful organization of the 'Chemometrics in Analytical Chemistry', VI CAC meeting, took place in Tarragona leaded by Prof. Xavier Rius of the University Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona).

Two years later, in June of 1998, the IV Colloquium Chimiometricum Mediterraneum has been organized again in Spain, at the University of Burgos, this time under the presidency of Prof. Luis Sarabia. During this congress the ‘Sociedad española de Quimiometria y Cualimetria’ was constituted and many contributions from different Spanish universities were presented, showing the present maturity of the field in Spain. Under the auspices of COMETT european projects and of Prof. Massart of the University of Brussels, different international chemometric schools were hold in Spain, such as that in Tortosa (June, 1989) and that of Santiago de Compostela (July, 1993). Other European Community initiatives like Erasmus, BCR and Measuring and Testing projects, have greatly contributed to the cooperation between Spanish and other European chemometricians.

At present, different groups in Spain are defining themselves as Chemometrics research groups, being the more consolidated ones, those of Prof. Rius (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona), Prof. Sarabia (Universidad de Burgos), Prof. Blanco (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Prof. Cela (University of Santiago de Compostela), Prof. Tomás (Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona) and Prof. Tauler (University of Barcelona). Many other researchers in different places of Spain are occasionally using and/or developing chemometric methods, most of them are included in the list of the NAmICS web page.

Chemometrics has been included in most of the chemistry curricula of the Spanish universities, appearing both as a compulsory and as an optional subject. Unfortunately, this relatively healthy situation of chemometrics in Spanish universities at present, is not coincident with the situation of chemometrics in Spanish chemical companies, where only recently, a weak interest for the chemometrics field has been detected in their RD departments. This is of course, the pending issue to be solved for the consolidation of Chemometrics in Spain in the next years.
 

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