The history of the fight against cancer has been a recurrent theme in Catalonia: the will and the conviction that we need to integrate different functions: sanitary education, prevention, search, treatment and Palliative Cares with the social attention on the population and of the sick with cancer.
Francesc Duran i Reynals planned an 'Institute of the Cancer' in the 1930s, which he was never able to see. In memory of his initiative the Hospital Duran i Reynals was conceived as a Hospital of Oncology. Other hospitals in Catalonia have created specialized services, which have filled in the gap for a long time.
Today, in the 21st century, we have the privilege to present the Catalonian Institute of Oncology, the first integral Institute of Cancer in Catalonia, an institution which makes the illusions and the will of entire generations of Catalonian oncologists come true.

The Institutes of Cancer have permitted everywhere in the world to gather the efforts of clinic specialists, epidemiologists, biologists, physics and other basic scientists, and to link them with several professionals, such as the ones of the sanitary education, the ones of the organization of preventive and welfare services, the ones of social aid and all types of groups of volunteers. In the world of medicine, this integration of efforts has been almost exclusive of the oncological discipline and has permitted to catalyze the individual efforts of each of the parts. Our Catalonian Institute of Oncology is born with the ambition to continue this tradition. It must be an Institute of technical avant-garde, exemplary in the personalized assistance to its patients, collaborating with other oncological centres in Catalonia, and an advanced position of our medicine in the international scientific world.