The famous balcony at Tarragona provides an unsurpassed view over the Mediterranean Sea. Several diamines are enjoying this view as they were produced at the laboratories of the local chemistry institute, the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ). The key to the success of their synthesis, reported as a Full paper by Kilian Muñiz et al., has been the application of hypervalent iodine(III) compounds. Their T-shaped structure nicely resembles the emblem of the town of Tarragona.

Muñiz and his team give us a full account on a novel intermolecular vicinal diamination of alkenes in the presence of a hypervalent iodine (III) reagent and bissulfonimides as nitrogen sources.

The applicability of this method is very broad, as demonstrated by a total of over 60 examples described in this paper.