The idea of QUITEL started in the laboratory of Prof. Pullman (Institute de Biologie Physique-Chemique, Paris) during an informal conference between Profs. Pullman and Giuseppe del Re, about the situation of theoretical chemistry in Italy, France and other countries, like United Kingdom and USA.

Apparently, the theoreticians were interested more in the meaning of numerical results to associate them to physical-chemical phenomena than on the own numbers. However, the physics formulation of these numbers in a clear form to overcome the linguistic barriers was necessary. Two possibilities could be applied: the use of a simple language available to everybody, or to maintain the mother language of each researcher increasing the expression capacity of ideas but with the risk of a decreasing of comprehension among the participants whose mother languages are different to that of speaker. The last result of this dialog was the convergence of using the different latin languages because there is no communication barrier among the researchers of Latin expression where the scientific terms are very similar.

From that point, the idea of a meeting for French and Italian theoreticians was born. The organization was proposed to Prof. Del Re (Italy) along with his collaborators: F. Momiccchioli, A. Rastelli, B. Cadioli, and L. Pincelli.

The first meeting was planned to 1968 but it was postponed to 1969 due to political events. Participants were happy with this initiative and an agreement was established to organize a next meeting in France with the participation of Prof. Daudel and his Spanish colleagues in 1970. After this meeting, the QUI(CHI)TEL was organized in Granada, Spain (1971) and from this edition the Profs. Y. G. Smeyers and J. I. Fernández-Alonso were active members of the international scientific committee. In 1974 Latin America joined to QUITEL (meeting at Morelia, Mexico) and later Northern Africa countries also joined to QUITEL, reaching so the meeting of the Three Continents and creating the solid basis to its continuity.

Since 2003, the celebration of QUITEL meetings are alternated between Europe, Africa, and Latin-America. In 2013, this congress comes back to Europe to the City of Granada, bridge of civilizations and the three continents.