Tomás Solís

Tomás Enrique Solís Nova was born on 28 September 1934 in Coelemu, in Chile's Itata Province. He attended local rural schools and later the Juan Madrid Normal School of Chillán, graduating as a normalist teacher. While teaching he joined the Communist Youth of Chile and became active as a trade unionist in the Bío Bío region, combining classroom work with political organising that would shape the rest of his public life.

From 1963 to 1969 Solís served as a regidor of Concepción and at times as deputy mayor. Elected deputy for the 10th Departmental Group in 1969, he sat in the Chamber of Deputies until 1973 and worked on the Permanent Commission of Public Works and Transport. After the 11 September 1973 coup he went into exile in Hungary and chaired the Chilean exile community there. Returning in the 1990s, he became the first mayor of the new commune of Chiguayante, serving four consecutive terms from 1996 to 2012. The municipality later credited him with landmark works including the municipal building, the Civic Quarter and Avenida Costanera.

Solís was a lifelong member of the Communist Party of Chile. Public biographical notices from the Library of the National Congress of Chile focus on his teaching, union and parliamentary roles rather than private family detail. After exile he resettled in the Concepción-Chiguayante area, where his later career as mayor kept him closely tied to local civic life.

Tomás Solís died on 11 September 2026, aged 91, after a long illness. BioBioChile reported that he had spent a long period hospitalised at the Sanatorio Alemán. The Municipality of Chiguayante announced communal mourning and described him as the first mayor who laid the foundations of the modern city. Wikipedia and Chilean press agree on the date 11 September 2026.

Solís is remembered as a bridge between Chile's pre-1973 parliamentary left and democratic local government after the dictatorship: a rural-born teacher who became a deputy, endured exile, and then spent sixteen years shaping a new commune. His name remains attached to Chiguayante's early civic infrastructure and to a political tradition that joined classroom, union hall and municipal chamber.