Wooton Rivers is a small town in Wiltshire, located a hundred kilometers southwest of London. Sitting in a corner of the local pub, The Royal Oak, I was admiring the beams of the fantastic building built in the 16th century, when I got a good surprise.
I had ordered a typical dessert, a crunchy currant cake, Gooseberry Crumble Cake the menu said, but what they served me did not contain the typical small berries, but rather large green and translucent currants that transported me directly to my childhood, in a kind of sudden Proustian trip. Those currants were special, they belonged to the Ribes uva-crispa species, with a texture between grape and lychee, and a delicious aroma. I had not seen them since, as a child, I ate them in the garden of Can Solé, in Les Planes.
Can Solé is located a few meters from the Vallvidrera stream, in a humid ravine where the vegetation was more reminiscent of that of Wiltshire than that of a dry Mediterranean oak forest. It had been built between the 19th and 20th centuries by Antoni Solé Molons, who was the right hand of the famous Frank S. Pearson, the man who electrified half of Catalonia and began the construction of the Barcelona railway in Sabadell and Terrassa. In those gloomy places the giant green currants were not the only botanical rarity. Swallow grass was also abundant, the botanists’ Chelidonium majus, whose orange latex, they said, eliminates warts, or the California Poppy, for the botanists Eschscholzia californica, delicately pronounced if you are eating a pollorón. The latter has a beautiful bright orange flower and curled petals. It is native to the California desert, but has spread throughout southern Europe as an ornamental. Mrs. Maria Antonia Solé referred to all those plants as those of l’onclo (uncle) Joan.
But who was Uncle Joan? The mystery extended well beyond my childhood, and little by little I discovered a formidable character who could have perfectly been a “homenot” for Josep Pla. When I was a teenager I was able to begin to connect the dots, upon discovering that, of the numerous offspring of Pearson’s assistant, two women, Euda and Núria, were daughters of Doctor Solé and that “they had left after the war to Colombia”, a euphemism for who had had to go into exile with their parents.
Joan Solé was a prominent Barcelona doctor at the beginning of the 20th century. Having been born in 1874, he undertook medical studies, obtaining his degree in 1899. An event that shocked him was the death, on the same day, of two of his sisters due to diphtheria: one and sixteen years old respectively. He had barely finished the race, and with the help of a companion, he made a useless effort to try to save his life. His brothers embarked on very different paths, related to engineering or topography. For example, the Les Planes station of the current FGC, the most beautiful on the line, responded to a design chosen by his brother Antoni.
Dr. Solé furthered his studies in Montpellier and Geneva, becoming interested in lung diseases and botany. He married in 1900. From a very young age he had cultivated various hobbies and two passions: nature and politics. She already went on excursions with his father, at first through the Collserola mountain range, and later with his friends through the Pyrenees. He especially liked botany and, within this, the part that is today known as ethnobotany, specifically the medicinal uses of plants. He had an intense social life and participated in Catalan movements from a very young age. Botany led him to be vice president, for a brief period, of the Catalan Institute of Natural History.
In politics, he presided over the Unió Catalanista, and positioned himself unequivocally in favor of the independence of Catalonia. During the First World War he piloted an initiative consisting of supporting the Allied cause against the central empires, promoting a corps of volunteers, the Catalan Volunteers, integrated into the French army, who fought in the main battles, where many of them died. Solé, who had a good friendship with Marshal Joffre, the hero of the Battle of the Marne, came to visit the front. But at the end of the war the borders in the Pyrenees remained as before. Solé was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Legion of Honor in gratitude, but nothing more. He briefly left politics, focusing on the practice of medicine. A typical sight of the time was to see him passing up and down with his characteristic battery-powered car, it was a green Detroit Electric and looked like a horseless carriage. He traveled many kilometers visiting patients and considered that gasoline engines were not a healthy alternative since they polluted the air! It was a century advanced…
Years later, he resumed political activities. Due to his friendship with Francesc Macià, he stood in the 1932 elections and was elected deputy to the Parliament of Catalonia. His admiration for Macià was only comparable to his lack of sympathy for Companys. Question of characters.
From a very young age he adopted the habit of writing daily about his experiences, activities, impressions and opinions. His diaries have been preserved and thanks to them his political life has been the subject of very detailed studies, highlighting a complete monograph by Joan Esculies. On the other hand, his scientific side has gone more unnoticed, especially because his activity as a botanist developed when he was very young or already in middle age and in South America.
Towards the end of the 80s I had the opportunity to meet his two daughters, Euda and Núria. It was at Queralbs’ house. Her father had acquired two old houses in the town and had them united and restored. He was in love with the mountains and the Pyrenees in particular. Some of his notable friends passed through Queralbs. His extroverted and kind nature, an imposing physique, accompanied by a thick beard and his inseparable hat, did not make him go unnoticed. He had friends with very varied fields of interest, professions and hobbies. Among them, that of the poet and playwright Àngel Guimerà stood out.
In the book Personatges Inoblidables i altres records, by Joan Alavedra, he explains that during the summer of 1895 a group of friends visited him. The Doctor, pointing to a distant farmhouse, the Mas Morer, explained the sad story of an heir who had taken in a beggar woman, making her his lover. That, in order for him to marry a rich heiress, and thus save the economy of the farmhouse, he forced her to marry a rude shepherd… and etcetera, etcetera. In the imagination of Àngel Guimerà the seed of Terra Baixa had germinated, the classic of Catalan theater translated into fourteen languages! Guimerà, a good observer, captured in his work the language that he had heard among the peasants and shepherds of Queralbs and Pardines.
His political period and the Civil War stopped practically all botanical activity. The outbreak of war caught him in Ripoll, although he immediately moved to Barcelona where he attended as a doctor to the wounded from the first combats, under the arcades of the Seven Gates, prior to the assault on Capitanía.
A very notable event occurred on July 22, 1936. With the Minister of Culture, Ventura Gasol, they feared for the integrity of some key pieces of historical heritage such as religious buildings and archives. Montserrat was one of them.
Accompanied by a team of police officers, he appeared in Montserrat to “seize” the monastery on behalf of the Generalitat. He ran into a group of people, from the Torrassa Libertarian Youth, who were preparing to burn the group of buildings. According to witnesses, he confronted the leader of the group, arguing that the Monastery should become a military hospital, thus saving the Benedictine Abbey. He also “confiscated” the medieval archive of Sant Joan de les Abadesses.
Similarly, Ventura Gasol and Companys himself commissioned him to go to Montblanc to negotiate with a committee of the Popular Front the transfer of Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer to the Generalitat, in order to take him to Barcelona, ??since he was kidnapped by a group of anarchists from the FAI. He got it; After many adventures and hours of negotiation, he was able to take him safely, thus saving him from certain death.
Towards the end of January 1939, with the war lost, Solé i Pla began the path of exile with his family, from which he would not return. He crossed the border with France through Agullana, having had to make a stop in Figueres to obtain passports and carry out the procedures for himself and a group of writers and people from the world of culture. For that the Legion of Honor did help him. He made the journey and crossed the border in the company of Antoni Rovira i Virgili, who in his work The Last Days of Republican Catalonia makes an overwhelming portrait of the bitterness with which Solé i Pla left his and her country behind. He loved the Pyrenees.
After short stays in several French cities, he made the decision to rebuild his life far away; in June he set sail from the port of Le Havre towards Colombia.
On Wednesday, November 1, 1950, El Salgar was practically empty. Bathed by the waters of the Caribbean Sea, it was a small town of humble people who lived linked to fishing and agriculture, located just 10 km from Barranquilla, the fourth largest Colombian city and capital of the department of Atlántico. The fishermen of El Salgar had gone en masse to say goodbye to their benefactor, the beloved Dr. Solé y Pla, who had died the day before. The ceremony was massive. That man who had arrived eleven years before with nothing, had earned, and in what way, his affection.
In the eleven years that he was in Colombia, he dedicated his time to three great tasks; the practice of medicine, the research and teaching of botany, and the maintenance of a cultural life among the recently exiled, founding the Casal Català de Barranquilla.
In this last area, he had the friendship and help of interesting characters and his house was a meeting point for the exiled community. Apart from the great botanist Josep Cuatrecasas, who became the world’s leading expert on Andean flora and ended his days at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the most notable person with whom he had a good friendship was the writer Ramon Vinyes. Married to a Colombian woman, Vinyes acted as a link between the exiles and the Colombian literary community. He must have been a charismatic character, since years later, Gabriel García Márquez immortalized him in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude in the character of The Catalan Wise Man, owner of a bookstore in Macondo, the imaginary town. Gabo coincided in Barranquilla with Vinyes and Solé.
The practice of medicine in Colombia began with some setbacks. The Board of Doctors of Bogotá showed reluctance that the newcomer could already practice medicine, but the issue was quickly resolved with the personal intervention of the President of the Republic of Colombia himself, at that time Eduardo Santos. Solé, who was the oldest of the emigrated doctors, always left a written record of his deep gratitude for the welcome that that country gave them. He practiced in Barranquilla, but with some curious variation. Every Saturday he traveled to the fishing village of El Salgar, where he built a clinic that he baptized as the Gabriela Mistral Mobile Clinic-School and Dispensary. There he altruistically served anyone who needed him, which was hundreds of people, logically earning the affection of the population, since he did not charge, not even in kind, among other things because he would not have known what to do with so much fish!
The second curiosity comes from his botanical expeditions. Since his arrival in exile he was fascinated by the natural wealth of that country. Colombia is truly a natural paradise, and has one of the highest biodiversity indices on the entire planet. For example, there are nearly 2,000 different species of birds recorded, 18% of the world total; in Europe we have 800! The botanical wealth is also extraordinary, being, for example, the country in the world with the greatest variety of orchids, more than 4000 species, in Europe 250. Solé, like Humboldt a century and a half before him, marveled and tried to get to know them better. wealth.
He obtained the chair of Botany and Geology at the Universidad del Atlántico in Barranquilla, and at the Museum of Natural History. His teaching activity was complemented with numerous expeditions to collect plants and, more importantly for him, obtain information about their medicinal virtues. Despite his age, he moved along the numerous branches of the lower course of the Magdalena River with steamers when it was feasible or with the typical cayucos, simple handmade canoes. Rowing was not a company free of risks and logistical complexity. To give an idea, six species of crocodiles and caimans can be found in Colombian rivers, among which the American crocodile or needle caiman as it is known there is the most notable. An adult male weighs more than 400 kg and is 4 meters long. An interesting detail for bathers is that it can swim at more than 30 km/hour. He also carried out countless botanical expeditions with horses through the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and many other points in the Guajiro territory, bordering Venezuela.
The fact is that our doctor traveled many kilometers herbalizing and speaking with the different indigenous communities. His preparation was meticulous, he documented beliefs and customs, social structure and languages. Among his field notebooks stands out an original Catalan-Guajiro dictionary, handwritten, which he created with his own phonetic transcription to help him with pronunciation. Like Humboldt or the Aragonese Félix de Azara, Solé placed above all great respect for the indigenous populations that he encountered along his path. It was not a tactic, it was a sample of his moral greatness, which he captured in his writings.
As a result of these expeditions he wrote an unpublished Colombian Medical Botany, in eleven volumes, which together with the rest of his notes and the herbarium are preserved in the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, ??since at the request of his friend the distinguished botanist Pius Font i Quer , his daughters donated their botanical legacy to this Barcelona institution. The most political and personal side of him is preserved in the National Archive of Catalonia, having been much more studied and disseminated.
Solé died at the age of 76, without having been able to complete his work or see his land again. The sadness of the farewell on the roads of Agullana, already on the verge of passing to France in 1939, which Rovira i Virgili captured and narrated so well, finally had its reason.
Already in the middle of the transition, and when updating the street directory of the Barcelona neighborhood of Les Planes, some neighbors proposed dedicating a walk to it next to Can Solé, close to the stream, surrounded by holm oaks, oaks, strawberry trees…and a cedar, the Christmas tree from the Solé family in 1903, a gift from a grateful patient, which Joan planted at her parents’ home, along with the rest of her curious plants and which, with the passage of time, now contemplates everything from its imposing height.
Cristòfol Jordà i Sanuy is president of the Carl Faust Foundation. Botanical Garden of Blanes