ALBA is a third generation synchrotron light source facility, designed to provide a high brilliance photon beam. It is co-financed by the Spanish Government and the regional Government of Catalonia, and managed by the Consortium for the Construction, Equipment and Exploitation of the Synchrotron Light Laboratory (CELLS). The accelerator complex consists of a 100 MeV Linear Accelerator (LINAC), a Booster that ramps the electron beam energy up to 3 GeV and a Storage Ring. The maximum operational current is 250 mA and it can operate in top up mode. Currently, ALBA has 10 beamlines in operation.

The ten beamlines are as follows: 1) Non-Crystalline Diffraction (NCD) for SAXS and WAXS experiments, 2) Macromolecular Crystallography (XALOC), 3) Photoemission spectroscopy and microscopy(CIRCE), 4) X-ray absorption spectroscopy (CLAESS), 5) High-Resolution Powder Diffraction (MSPD), 6) X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism (BOREAS), 7) X-ray cryo-microscopy (MISTRAL) and 8) Infrared Microspectroscopy beamline (MIRAS), 9) Angle Resolved Photo-Emission Spectroscopy (LOREA), 10)  X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and instrumentation tests (NOTOS).  These beamlines are designed to cover a wide range of fields such as materials science, nanotechnology, medicine, physics, chemistry, biology…