It makes perfect sense to dedicate a chapter ofA country of science at the Casa de Convalescència of the Hospital de la Santa Creu, located in the Raval, a stone's throw from the headquarters of ARA. It is the headquarters of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), whose Section of Sciences is very powerful. Catalans associate the IEC, our national academy, especially, with Catalan and its normative dictionary, the DIEC. But under the shelter of this more than centenarian entity (it was founded in 1907 by Enric Prat de la Riba), very diverse scientific research has been carried out on topics as varied as the biogenome, the Romanesque Pyrenees or migrations and diversity.