Newborn screening in Spain, with particular reference to Galicia: Echoes of Louis I. Woolf.

After briefly recalling the main events leading to the establishment of newborn screening programmes, this paper details the early history of their introduction in Spain and sketches their expansion to cover the whole Spanish population. Spain is exceptional in that its screening methods have in general been based on planar chromatographic techniques developed or inspired by Louis I. Woolf, rather than on bacterial inhibition tests, as is illustrated by the practice of the newborn screening laboratory of Galicia (N.W. Spain).