We welcome you to the Catalan Institute for Water Research Foundation (ICRA). This research institute was created on 26 October 2006 by the Government of Catalonia within the framework of the Research Centres Programme of Catalonia (CERCA), and was inaugurated on 7 October 2009. The trustees supporting it are the Catalonia Government’s Department of Economy and Knowledge (DECO), the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) and the University of Girona (UdG). The Catalan Regional Government has pledged its backing to the ICRA as a multidisciplinary water research centre. It is an international reference point that focuses research of the integral water cycle, hydraulic resources, water quality (in the broadest sense of the term: chemical, microbiological, ecological, etc.) and treatment and evaluation technologies and to transfer this knowledge to society and business network. In view of the importance of water as a fundamental commodity for life and the issues that surround it, the ICRA aims to become a pole of knowledge with international prestige in the science and technology of water. The research carried out at the ICRA has to do with all the aspects related with water, particularly those associated with its rational use and the effects of human activity on hydraulic resources. In brief, the ICRA has been created to conduct top-quality multidisciplinary research in the world of water.