ALBA is a 3rd generation Synchrotron Light facility located in Cerdanyola del Vallès, (Barcelona). ALBA currently has eight operational state-of-the-art beamlines, comprising soft and hard X-rays, which are devoted mainly to biosciences, condensed matter (magnetic and electronic properties, nanoscience) and materials science. Additionally, four beamlines are in construction (low-energy ultra-high-resolution angular photoemission for complex materials, microfocus for macromolecular crystallography, absorption and diffraction and fast X-ray tomography & radioscopy)

BOREAS is a soft X-ray beamline dedicated to polarization-dependent spectroscopic investigations of advanced materials of fundamental as well as applied interest. It has two endstations, a high-field vector cryomagnet for techniques like soft X-ray (magnetic) circular and linear dichroism (XMCD/XMLD), and a UHV reflectometer for soft x-ray resonant and coherent scattering under high-fields and cryogenic temperatures.