Self-healing materials are materials with the capability to repair their damage autogenously or with minimal help from an external stimulus. In the construction field, the development of self-healing elements will increase the durability of structures and reduce their maintenance and repair actions. Reinforced concrete elements frequently suffer small cracks (< 0.3 mm) due to the low tensile strength of concrete. These cracks are not relevant from the mechanical point of view, but they can be an entrance point for aggressive agents that could initiate degradation processes in the element. Concrete has a natural self-healing capability able to seal small cracks, named autogenous healing, that is mainly produced by the continuing hydration and carbonation processes. However, this self-healing capability is limited and therefore it is typically disregarded in the design of concrete structures. Recent studies have attempted to surpass the limitations of autogenous healing in two ways: developing concrete compositions to improve autogenous healing, or designing specific products to achieve self-healing, also known as autonomous self-healing. The latter selfhealing products include, among others: crystalline admixtures, micro-or macroencapsulated agents, and even the use of calcium carbonate-precipitating bacteria. All these products are in different stages of maturity, and some of them are still in development. First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Pedro Serna for his trust and guidance during these years. Thank you for giving me this opportunity and introducing me into research, for all the invaluable experiences and knowledge, which have made me grow both personally and professionally. Thank you for always pushing me to move forward. This thesis would not have been possible without the work of the students that were part of the self-healing team that worked at the Instituto de Ciencia y Tecnología del Hormigón (ICITECH, UPV): Simone Moscato, Francesco Pirritano and Laura Rubio. I would also like to thank Prof. Liberato Ferrara from Politecnico di Milano for the collaboration and the fruitful discussions during these years. I would also like to acknowledge Mercedes Sánchez from Instituto Eduardo Torroja de Ciencias de la Construcción for the XRD analyses of the crystalline admixtures. This work would not have been possible without the financial support provided by Sika A.G. Thanks also to Sika Spain, Elite Cementos and Lafarge for the supply of the different materials. Thanks to the technicians Paco and Jürgen, for their support in the laboratory but also for all the laughs and our conversations on politics and music. During these years I have shared experiences and laboratory and office work with many people at ICITECH, from which I would like to give special mention to Itziar and Mabel for their sincere support. Thanks to the professors of the research group, especially to Guillermo for the honest comments and the history-politics lessons during coffee breaks.