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Spanish Crystallographic Association

The Spanish Crystallographic Association (formally called Grupo Especializado de Cristalografía, GEC) unites Spanish crystallographers and scientists working on all aspects of crystallography. GEC, which was formed in 1978 under the auspices of the Royal Spanish Societies of Chemistry and Physics has almost two hundred active scientists dealing with subjects as diverse as phase transitions, small and macromolecular structures, aperiodic crystals, and new structure solution methods. In 1988, due in part to the efforts of a group of senior crystallographers led by Dr. Sagrario Martínez, the GEC expanded its efforts. Since then the GEC has been editing a periodic bulletin containing information about national and international meetings, new hard and software, new books, journals and current projects, and notes on the activities of the different research groups. The two most significant activities of the GEC are the biannual Crystallographic Schools for postgraduate students, which cover all aspects of crystallography (1990: Single crystal diffractometry; 1992: Powder diffraction, 1994: Macromolecular crystallography, 1996: Molecular Modelling) and the annual GEC Meetings. These are usually three-day meetings, with lectures by local and international speakers, poster sessions and round-table discussions of controversial crystallographic topics (industry and crystallography, crystallography and student curricula, scientific politics and crystallography, new hardware and future crystallography, etc.) The size of the meetings has been growing,: at the last one more than 50 posters were presented and the number of active participants exceeded 100 people. In 1997 the GEC Meeting was not held so that GEC members could use travel money to attend the European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM-17) held in Lisbon. Fortunately, 66 participants of the ECM-17 meeting came from Spain, most of them being members of the GEC.

The next "X GEC Meeting" will be held in the Spring of 1998 in Andorra (a beautiful town in the centre of the Pyrenees mountains!). The main lectures will concern the topic "Beyond the crystalline state". We invite our French and Portuguese neighbors to join us at this meeting. For more information contact J.F. Piniella, e-mail: `IGCR0@cc.uab.es'. If you are interested in GEC, please e-mail `Lahoz@posta.unizar.es'.

Fernando J. Lahoz