Fernando Alonso will start his home race from seventh place on Sunday, which is his best starting position since the 2016 Hungarian Grand Prix, where he also started seventh.
The Spaniard surprised the viewing public by placing his McLaren on the fourth-row of the grid for the race, a result he described as "perfect", much to the delight of the thousands of fans in the grandstands.
It marked a fine recovery for Alonso after a disrupted Friday, in which he finished last, having sat out the bulk of FP1 after an engine failure.
"I think everything went perfect today," he said. "Better than we thought! It's a nice surprise to be in Q3 and to be P7.
"I think yesterday we had potential, we saw potential, but we had strange sessions. A failure in FP1 and short running in FP2, but today we put every together and I felt confident in the car.
"They were quite tricky conditions, it was quite windy, but my car was giving me the confidence to push 100 per cent.
"I'm happy with that and happy for the team as well, they've worked so much and changed so many power units in the first races that, you know, to be P7, to feel tomorrow on the grid, to be amongst the cars we should be fighting for the top positions, will be a nice boost for the guys."
Alonso is keen to finally get on the scoreboard this season, having failed to score a point in the opening four races.
"Always here [in Spain], I find this extra motivation to take care of every detail of the car," he said.
"It's always a good grand prix for me, but the race is tomorrow. They don't give points on Saturdays so we need to prepare a good strategy and execute it well to take some points."
McLaren boss Zak Brown added: "What a laugh. The team is doing a great job. Eric [Boullier] and the whole crew, just fantastic. Fernando at home, he did it. Now we've got to finish where we start tomorrow. This is good, very happy for the team."
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