Robert Rodríguez-Roisin,
This year 2015 marks the 30th anniversary of a simple but relevant story for respiratory medicine in Spain. In 1985, for the first time, a small group of young chest physicians, all based in Barcelona, attended the annual congress of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) in Anaheim, California. What was special about this expedition was that these fellows were presenting their own oral and poster communications, all supported by institutional grants. More importantly, their engagement and commitment to respiratory research is not only active today, but also considered internationally of great impact. This attendance at the ATS meeting represented a major breakthrough for Spanish respiratory research and was the beginning of a series of achievements that resulted in the development of one of the most active research clusters in respiratory medicine in Europe.
The fact that the European Respiratory Society (ERS) nominated in 2014 eight Spanish ERS Fellows, seven of them based in Barcelona, is the best argument in support of this statement.
