Carles Solà

Carles Solà i Ferrando was a Valencian-born Spanish chemical engineer, university leader and Catalan government minister who helped reshape the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Catalonia's higher-education system at the turn of the twenty-first century. Born in Xàtiva, in the Costera region of Valencia, on 1 January 1945, he earned his degree and doctorate in chemical sciences at the Universitat de València before building his academic career at the UAB, where he became a professor of chemical engineering and a member of the Cellular Engineering and Bioprocesses group.

His research spanned biochemical engineering, next-generation vaccine production and biological CO2-capture systems using microalgae. Colleagues credited him with more than 130 scientific publications, twenty-two supervised doctoral theses and early leadership in creating the UAB's chemical-engineering department and pioneering biotechnology degree programmes in Spain. From 1994 to 2002 he served as rector of the UAB. During those eight years the university opened its School of Engineering, a doctoral and continuing-education school, the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology and the Scientific Information Port, began adapting to the European Higher Education Area, and inaugurated the Civic Plaza and Andreu Alfaro's emblematic campus columns. He also chaired Spain's Conference of Rectors of Universities (CRUE) from 1996 to 1998, sat on boards of the International Association of University Presidents and the European University Association, and received an honorary doctorate in science from the University of Southampton in 1999.

In December 2003 Solà became Catalonia's minister of Universities, Research and the Information Society in Pasqual Maragall's first tripartite government, proposed by Josep Lluís Carod-Rovira and noted as the first Valencian to hold a Catalan ministerial portfolio. He pressed for stronger university funding, clearer research-centre models and Statute language affirming Catalonia's power to organise its university system, before being replaced by Manel Balcells in April 2006 amid the government's crisis. A lifelong figure of left Valencianism and Catalan culture, he helped promote the Xarxa Vives d'Universitats and the Catalan Association of Public Universities, belonged to Acció Cultural del País Valencià and the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, and in 2010 closed the Barcelona list for Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència.

Solà died in Sant Cugat del Vallès, where he lived, on 12 September 2026, aged 81. The UAB and CRUE published tributes; rector Javier Lafuente called him "teacher, light, compass and companion" and "the most important rector in the history" of the still-young university.