This work reviews the origin of the current Instituto de Catalisis y Petroleoquimica (ICP, Institute of Catalysis and Petroleum Chemistry) that belongs to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC, Spanish National Research Council). The first papers on catalysis were published in Spanish scientific journals in 1908. In 1912, the first catalytic experiments were done in the research laboratories belonging to a new Spanish institution established in 1907, the Junta para la Ampliacion de Estudios e Investigaciones Cientificas (JAE, Council for Development of Studies and Scientific Researches), which was not dependent on the university. These laboratories were later integrated in the new Instituto Nacional de Fisica y Quimica (National Institute of Physics and Chemistry), opened in 1932 and located in a new building financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1939, at the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the JAE was abolished and replaced by CSIC. As a consequence of the reorganization process of the research institutes undertaken by CSIC, the Instituto de Quimica Fisica "Antonio Gregorio Rocasolano" (IQFR, Institute of Chemical Physics) was founded in 1946, which basically inherited the former National Institute of Physics and Chemistry, and on the very same premises. A new Catalysis Laboratory was established in 1953 in the IQFR under the leadership of Prof. Juan Francisco Garcia de la Banda, which evolved through several steps to become finally an independent research center in 1975 under the name of Instituto de Catalisis y Petroleoquimica (ICP, Institute of Catalysis and Petroleum Chemistry). The ICP moved to its present premises in 1990. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.