Wooton Rivers is a small village in Wiltshire, located a hundred kilometers south-west of London. Sitting in a corner of the local pub, The Royal Oak, I was admiring the bigam of the fantastic 16th century building, when I got a nice surprise.
I had ordered a typical dessert, a gooseberry crumble cake, the menu said Gooseberry Crumble Cake, but what I was brought did not contain the typical small berries, but large translucent green gooseberries that transported me straight to my childhood , in a kind of sudden Proustian trip. Those currants were special, they belonged to the species Ribes uva-crispa, with a texture between grapes and li-chi, and a delicious aroma. I hadn’t seen them since, when I was very young, I ate them in the garden of Can Solé, in Les Planes.
Can Solé is located a few meters from the stream of Vallvidrera, in a wet bottom where the vegetation was more reminiscent of Wyltshire than that of a dry Mediterranean oak grove. It had been built between the 19th and 20th centuries by Antoni Solé Molons, who was the right-hand man of the famous Frank S. Pearson, the man who electrified half of Catalonia and started the construction of the railway from Barcelona to Sabadell and Terrassa. Giant green gooseberries weren’t the only botanical rarity in those shady groves.
Also if he found abundant swallow-wort, the botanists’ Chelidonium majus, the orange latex of which, they said, removes warts, or the California rose, by the botanists Eschscholzia californica, of delicate pronunciation if it is being eaten a dustpan The latter has a beautiful bright orange flower and curly petals, it is native to the California desert but has spread throughout southern Europe as an ornamental. Mrs. Maria Antonia Solé was referring to all those plants like Uncle Joan’s.
But who was Uncle Joan? The mystery extended well beyond my childhood, and little by little I discovered a formidable character who could perfectly have been a man of Josep Pla. As a teenager, I was able to start tying heads when I discovered that of the numerous offspring of Pearson’s assistant, two women, Euda and Núria, were the Doctor’s daughters, who “had left after the war in Colombia”, a euphemism for they had had to go into exile with their parents.
Joan Solé was a prominent Barcelona doctor of the early 20th century. Having been born in 1874, he began his medical studies, obtaining his degree in 1899. One event that shocked him was the death, on the same day, of two of his sisters due to diphtheria; one a year old and the other sixteen. He had just finished the race, and with the help of a colleague, he tried in vain to save his life. His brothers took very different paths, related to engineering or topography. For example, the Les Planes station of the current FGC, the most beautiful of the line, responded to a design chosen by his brother Antoni.
Doctor Solé extended his studies in Montpellier and in Geneva, becoming interested in lung diseases and botany. He married in 1900. From a very young age he had many hobbies, and two passions: nature and politics. Already with his father he made excursions, at first through the Collserola mountain range, and later with his friends through the Pyrenees.
He particularly liked botany and, within this, the part known today as ethnobotany, specifically the medicinal uses of plants. He had an intense social life and participated in Catalanist movements from a very young age. Botany led him to become vice-president, for a short period, of the Catalan Institute of Natural History.
In politics, he presided over the Unió Catalanista, and was unequivocally in favor of the independence of Catalonia. During the First World War he piloted an initiative to support the allied cause against the central empires, promoting a body 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. At the end of the war, however, the borders in the Pyrenees remained as before. Solé was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Légion d’Honneur in gratitude, but nothing else. He briefly left politics, focusing on the practice of medicine.
A typical image of the time was to see him go up and down in his characteristic car powered by batteries, it was a green Detroit Electric and looked like a horseless carriage. He traveled many kilometers visiting patients and considered that petrol engines were not a healthy alternative as they polluted the air! It was more than a century ahead…
Years later, he resumed activities. Because of his friendship with Francesc Macià, he ran for the elections and was elected deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia. His admiration for Macià was only comparable to his little sympathy for Companys. Question of characters.
From a very young age he adopted the habit of writing in a diary 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 Josep Esculies. On the other hand, his scientific facet has gone more unnoticed, especially because his activity as a botanist developed at a very young age or already in adulthood 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 the house of Queralbs. His father had acquired two old houses in the village and had them joined 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 full beard and his inseparable hat, did not let him go unnoticed. I had friends with varied fields of interest, professions and hobbies. Among them, that of the poet and playwright Àngel Guimerà stood out.
In the book Unforgettable Characters and Other Memories, by Joan Alavedra, he explains that during the summer of 1895 a group of friends visited Dr. Solé and Plan. There, pointing to a distant farmhouse, Mas Morer.
The host told them the sad story of an heir who had taken in a beggar, turning her into his friend. That in order for him to marry a rich girl and save the farm’s economy, he will force her to marry a rude shepherd…and so on and so forth. 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, embodied in his work the language he had heard among the farmers and shepherds of Queralbs and Pardines.
His political stage and the Civil War stopped practically all botanical activity. The outbreak of war took him to Ripoll, so he immediately moved to Barcelona where he attended as a doctor the wounded from the first battles, under the porch of the Seven Doors, prior to the assault on Capitania.
A very remarkable 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 squad of police officers, he went to Montserrat to “seize” the monastery on behalf of the Generalitat. He ran into a group of people, from the Juventudes Libertarias de la Torrassa, who were preparing to burn the set of buildings. According to the witnesses, he faced the head of the platoon, with the argument that the Monastery had to be turned into a military hospital, thus saving the Benedictine Abbey. He also “confiscated” the medieval archive of Sant Joan de les Abadesses.
In a similar way, Ventura Gasol and the Companys themselves instructed him to go to Montblanc in order 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 FAI anarchists. He left; after many vicissitudes and hours of negotiation, he was able to be taken safe and sound, thus freeing him from certain death
Towards the end of January 1939, with the war lost, Solé i Pla, with his family, started the path of exile, from which he would not return. He crossed the border with France through Agullana, having had to make a stop in Figueres to obtain a passport and carry out the procedures for himself and a group of writers and people from the world of culture. The Legion of Honor did help him in this. 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”, paints a striking portrait of the bitterness with which Solé i Pla left behind the his country and his beloved Pyrenees.
After short stays in several French cities, he made the decision to redo his life far away and with his family, in June, he set sail from the port of Le Havre bound for Colombia.
Towards the end of January 1939, with the war lost, Solé i Pla started the path of exile with his family, from which he would not return. He crossed the border in the company of Antoni Rovira and Virgili, leaving behind his beloved Pyrenees, and soon after set sail for Colombia
On Wednesday, November 1, 1950, El Salgar was practically empty. Bathed by the waters of the Caribbean Sea, it was a village 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 Atlántico department. The fishermen of El Salgar had gone en masse to dismiss their benefactor, the beloved Dr. Solé i Pla, who had died the day before. The ceremony was crowded. That man who had arrived eleven years earlier with nothing, had won, and in what way, his esteem.
In this last area, he had the friendship and help of interesting characters and his house was a meeting point for the exiled Catalan community. Apart from the great botanist Josep Cuatrecasas, who became the world’s greatest expert on Andean flora and ended his days at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the most remarkable person with whom he shared a good friendship was the writer Ramon Vinyes . Vinyes, married to a Colombian woman, 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 Cien años de Soledad in the character of El sabio Catalan, owner of a bookstore in Macondo, the imaginary town. Gabo met in Barranquilla with Vinyes and Solé.
The practice of medicine in Colombia began with something stolen. The Board of Doctors in Bogota showed reluctance that he could practice medicine just by arriving, but the matter 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 emigrant doctors, always left a written record of his deep gratitude for the welcome that the country gave them.
He worked in Barranquilla, but with some curious variant. Every Saturday he traveled to the fishing village of El Salgar, where he built a clinic that he named the “Gabriela Mistral Traveling School-Consultorio y Dispensario”.
There he altruistically attended to everyone who needed it, which were hundreds of people, logically gaining the affection of the population, since he did not get paid, not even in cash, since he would not have known what to do with so much fish!
The second curiosity comes from his botanical expeditions. From the time he arrived in exile he was fascinated by the natural wealth of that country. Colombia is truly a natural paradise, as it has one of the highest biodiversity rates on the planet.
For example, there are nearly 2000 different species of birds accounted for, 18% of the world total; in Europe we have 800! The botanical wealth is also extraordinary, being the country in the world with the most variety of orchids, more than 4000 species, in Europe 250. Solé, like Humboldt a century and a half before him, marveled and tried to know better that 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 by numerous expeditions to collect plants and, more importantly for him, information about their medicinal virtues. Despite his age, he moved through the numerous arms of the lower course of the Magdalena river in the typical cayucos, a kind of handmade canoe. A rem, it was not a company without risks and logistical complexity.
To give you an idea, six species of crocodiles and alligators can be found in Colombian rivers, of which the American crocodile or caimán aguja 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 made botanical excursions on horseback 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 talking to the different indigenous communities. His preparation was meticulous, he documented beliefs and customs, social structure and languages. Among his field notebooks, an original Catalan-Guajiro dictionary stands out, written by hand, which he elaborated with his own phonetic transcription to help with pronunciation. Like Humboldt or the Aragonese Félix de Azara, Solé placed above all great respect for the indigenous populations he encountered on his way. It was not a tactic, it was a sign of his moral greatness, which is reflected in his writings.
As a result of these expeditions, he wrote an unpublished Botánica Médica Colombiana, in eleven volumes, which together with the rest of his notes and the herbarium are kept at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, ??since at the request of his friend the ‘significant botanist Pius Font i Quer, his daughters donated their botanical legacy to this Barcelona institution. Its more political and personal side is preserved in the National Archives 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 his farewell from the paths of Agullana, about to move to France in 1939, which was so well captured and narrated by Rovira and Virgili, had reason to be. Already in full transition, and when updating the nomenclature of streets in the Barcelona district of Les Planes, some residents proposed dedicating a walk to it. A walk near the creek, surrounded by oaks, oaks, holm oaks, marfuls… and a cedar, the Christmas tree of the Solé family in 1903, a gift from a grateful patient, my uncle Joan planted at home by his parents with the rest of his curious plants and that, with the passage of time, now contemplates everything from its imposing height.
