The Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) is a Spanish think tank headquartered in Barcelona, devoted to research in the field of international relations. It defines itself as an "independent institution" that studies specifically "global issues that affect governance at different levels, from international to local". Legally, CIDOB is a private foundation endowed with a board of trustees made up of the main public institutions and universities of Barcelona and Catalonia. Both the centre and the foundation are governed by statutes, a code of ethics, and a master plan. At present, CIDOB is the oldest think tank in Spain and one of the most influential in its area, at the European level. Name and acronym The centre's original name was, from 1973 onwards, Centre d'Informació i Documentació Internacionals a Barcelona (Barcelona Centre for International Information and Documentation), thus giving rise to the acronym CIDOB. Later on, the centre was referred to using other names, such as Centro de Relaciones Internacionales y Cooperación Internacional (Centre of International Relations and International Cooperation), Centro de Investigación de Relaciones Internacionales y Desarrollo (Research Centre on International Relations and Development), and Centro de Estudios y Documentación Internacionales de Barcelona (Barcelona Centre for International Studies and Documentation). Since 2013, the official name, in all cases and without translations, uses the English form Barcelona Centre for International Affairs. History CIDOB was founded in 1973 as a nonprofit, socio-cultural association based on the personal experience of its founder, Josep Ribera i Pinyol (1933–2017). Ribera was one of the promoters of the Catalan inter-diocesan movement Agermanament (Brothering), which was active in cooperation projects with countries in Africa and Latin America. This original CIDOB was known as CIDOB Tercer Mundo (CIDOB Third World) or CIDOB-TM. In 1979, as a result of the political transformations taking place in Catalonia and Spain, CIDOB was legally constituted as a private foundation with a board of trustees, whose members, public and private, represented the political and cultural life of Catalonia and Spain. In the following years, CIDOB grew to become a research and documentation centre focused on international affairs and global issues, such as human development and migration. Since the 1990s, the centre has strengthened its networking connections with European initiatives on issues concerning cooperation, international relations, and security, as well as its academic activities, which are aimed to generate ideas and specific political action. Ribera continued to head CIDOB until December 2008, when