Preface: Journal of Inorganic and General Chemistry 11/2005
Authors: Castiñeiras A. , Vázquez‐López E. M. 
Published: August 2005

The present issue of Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie contains 51 papers contributed by almost all the research groups represented at the 2004 biannual meetings of the Inorganic Chemistry and Solid State Chemistry Groups of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry, which in the encouraging light of previous experiences were for the third time running held jointly as a single event (QIES‐04, September 12th‐16th 2004, Santiago de Compostela). On this occasion the attendance of several prestigious German researchers as plenary lecturers at the Joint Meeting prompted us to broaden its targeted community by making it, at the same time, the 1st Hispano‐German Scientific Colloquium of Inorganic Chemistry Groups.

QIES‐04 was designed to be of interest to Spanish and German scientists working in the fields of catalysis, materials science, bioinorganic chemistry, coordination chemistry, solid state chemistry, theoretical inorganic chemistry, modelling in inorganic chemistry, environmental chemistry, organometallic chemistry and supramolecular inorganic chemistry. In the event, it provided a platform for 10 plenary lectures, 10 short lectures, 23 oral communications and 165 posters, and was attended by 225 researchers (not only from Spain and Germany).

The opening lecture, entitled New Transition Metal Clusters, was delivered by Prof. D. Fenske (University of Karlsruhe), and the closing lecture, Self‐Organized Inorganic Precipitation, by Prof. J.M. García‐Ruíz (Laboratory for Crystallographic Studies, Granada). The other plenary lectures concerned the electronic properties of mixed oxides (given by Prof. M.A. Señaris, University of A Coruña), homo‐ and heteronuclear main group element polycations (Prof. J. Beck, University of Bonn), supramolecular architectures in metallic carboxylates (Prof. R. Carballo, University of Vigo), the formation, properties and applications of novel silica nanoparticles (Prof. M. Binnewies, University of Hannover), new developments in the chemistry of nitrido‐ and carbometalates (Prof. R. Kniep, Max‐Planck‐Institut, Dresden), the structure and reactivity of nitrido complexes (Prof. J. Strähle, University of Tübingen) and thiocyanato and selenocyanato bridging ligands in polynuclear transition metal complexes (Prof. H. Krautscheid, University of Leipzig). Abstracts of these and all the other communications presented are compiled in the Book of Abstracts (Univ. Santiago de Compostela, 2004 – ISBN 84‐8121‐755‐7) and may be found at http://www.usc.es/qies04.

As members of its Organizing Committee, we are pleased to have received the impression that the Meeting provided an enjoyable opportunity for the discussion and exchange of research findings, and for contacts between workers from different countries and in different, though related, fields. We take this opportunity to express our deep appreciation to all those who took part in QIES‐04 or its organization and contributed to its success. Special thanks go to the lecturers; to the other members of the Organizing Committee and also to our hard‐working Ph.D. students, to whose enthusiastic assistance much of the success of the congress is due.

Finally, we thank Prof. Dr. W. Bronger, Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. K. Dehnicke and Dr. habil. W. Hanke, Editors of ZAAC, for making its pages availables to us for the publication of these papers in a single special issue; and in consonance, we believe, with the sentiments of many of those who attended QIES‐04, we dedicate this issue to the memory of four friends and colleagues whose recent death has deprived us of a source of inspiration and counsel: Profs. Francisco González of the University of Sevilla, Antonio Jerez of the Universidad Nacional a Distancia, Isidoro Rasines of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, and Julio Rodríguez of the University of Oviedo.