Short answers, pulled from the story.
The institution officially became the Polytechnic University of Barcelona in March 1971. It adopted the name Polytechnic University of Catalonia on the 4th of July 1983 following Spain's University Reform Act.
The university currently operates eighteen schools across multiple cities including Barcelona, Castelldefels, Manresa, Sant Cugat del Vallès, Terrassa, Igualada, and Vilanova i la Geltrú. These locations house all undergraduate and graduate programs for over 30,000 students as of the academic year 2024.
Víctor de Buen Lozano served as the first president of the institute when it opened its doors in 1968. He was an industrial and aeronautical engineer by trade who consolidated scattered educational resources into a single powerful body.
The MareNostrum supercomputer was installed in the Torre Girona chapel in January 2005. This massive machine is co-managed by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the institution with participation from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.
Anna Kiesenhofer won gold in the women's road race at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics after earning a PhD in Mathematics from the school. Matthias Maurer became a German ESA astronaut selected for SpaceX Crew-3 to the International Space Station after studying materials science there.