To extend and reinforce the action of the European network EARLINET (supported by the EARLINET-ASOS European project), a network of Spanish and Portuguese aerosol lidars (SPALINET) was created. In the first three years of the project six out of the ten systems have been successfully intercompared, seven elastic algorithms and six Raman algorithms have also been validated. Now the network focuses on future scientific objectives aiming at performing coordinated measurements. This paper presents the scientific context and a description of the network, as well as the results from the first three years of activity.