Gustau Catalan is an ICREA Research Professor at ICN2 in Barcelona, where he leads the Oxide Nanophysics laboratory. His research covers emerging properties of oxides at the nanoscale, with emphasis on ferroic, multiferroic and antiferroelectric materials. He has published more than 100 articles and received more than 16000 citations for his works, which include seminal discoveries ranging from the flexoelectricity and photo-flexoelectricity of semiconductors or the use of strain gradients to manipulate ferroelectricity, to the scaling laws of ferroelectric domains and their implications for domain wall nanoelectronics. Recently, he has turned his attention to antiferroelectrics –the subject of his talk- where he is currently studying their phase stability, electrocaloric properties and switching dynamics.