With just a blood sample, a pioneering machine from the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Catalonia (IMLCFC) provides very specific information about what a person has done in the hours prior. The chromatograph's screen shows which substances are present and in what quantity of caffeine, drugs, alcohol, or psychoactive substances, for example. Through this technology, many more components can be detected than others – including the most unusual drugs – and their quantity can be much more precisely determined; this is especially useful information in cases where it must be clarified whether a person has committed a crime under the influence of drugs, as it can lead to a sentence reduction, or to prove whether chemical submission has occurred in a sexual assault case.

More than half of fatal child drownings in Catalonia between 2019 and 2023 correspond to minors of foreign origin, according to a study promoted by the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Catalonia (IMLCFC) and the Agency for Public Health of Catalonia.

An autopsy room is cold and bright. Everything is clean, metallic, and dazzling, from the bunks to the lamps, utensils, and refrigerators. The autopsy rooms of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Catalonia (IMLCFC) are in the basement of the City of Justice, a kind of underground hospital (the smell is similar). There are four double autopsy rooms and one single room. We enter the one with a few chairs through a glass window. As if in a movie theater, students and future judges sit and watch the autopsies in action.