Juli Soler's latest prank

RosesThe sun was setting over the sea. We are at the Trinitat Castle in Roses, the watchtower that defended the town and which today is the bastion of memory, as we are at a tribute dedicated to Juli Soler, who died 10 years ago from a degenerative disease. Juli Soler was many things: a passionate music lover, a fun professional, everyone's best friend, and also the soul of El Bulli. Without him, none of what happened would have happened.

"This is a party, not a funeral," said Ferran Adrià. Journalist Cristina Jolonch described it as "Soler's last prank, because 10 years later, he continues to influence gastronomy and is very present."

So present that no one missed it. The top brass of Catalan gastronomy were there and delighted. "Everything he touched sparkled," "He made every special person heard," "He turned every encounter into a memorable memory," they said. This is how people passing by described him, recalling anecdotes about Soler, a man with an optimistic spirit.

Rita Soler, Juli's daughter, began with a quote her father once said: "We are all who we are, but not the ones who have to be there." "It's very fun," she said. "Juli would have laughed a lot with the little train." She was referring to the tourist train that those attending the event took to go up to the castle, after unveiling a plaque in tribute to Soler.

The other mainstay of El Bulli, Ferran Adrià, confesses that he spent more time with him than with his wife. And he shares an anecdote from their first trip to Japan. They were being filmed for a documentary, and were sitting at the bar of a Japanese restaurant. They were brought a rotten-smelling niguirio. Soler maneuvered it so the cameraman could focus elsewhere and then soaked it on Oriol Castro, who was with them. Then they were served venison liver. He put it in his pocket and left the restaurant with it in his pocket. Being with Julio was a party.

At the event, organized by the Roses - Cap de Creus Business Association, the Empordà Hospitality Business Association, and Roses City Council, were his wife, Marta Sala, and their children, Pancho, Rita, and Julia; who did not feel like they had an absent father, but rather a much larger family, who were constantly at home.

Valentí Grau, a friend, describes him as intelligent, restless, and unpredictable. "What Juli created, he created to take on difficult challenges. And the hardest thing he ever did was create El Bulli. The icing on the cake was Ferran Adrià." "The great seducer, the human cannonball, the snake charmer, our Juli," describes Artur Sagués, head waiter at El Bulli. Toni Gerez, also head waiter at El Bulli, says: "Julio was our father, our friend, our colleague, and our confessor." And Ferran Adrià shouts: "Toni, don't say anything!" "He taught us to enjoy life, the sun, Russian salad, our childhood gin and tonics. I could say a lot, but I better not," says Gerez, and everyone laughs.

"Julio invented selfies," says Lluís García, maître and head of reservations at El Bulli. As the event progresses, hundreds of photos of him with various people are passed around, taken before mobile phones that allowed them to exist. Truly, he was ahead of his time. Jaume Subirós, from the Motel Empordà, describes him as "a man of the land": "We Empordà residents face the north wind, those from outside get headaches. Juli, even though he wasn't from Terrassa, faced it." Disfrutar chef Mateu Casañas remembers that Soler "believed in people": "We should be grateful for everything the humanity that Juli, Ferran, and Albert Adrià had given us."

For journalist Salvador García Arbós, Soler had a knack for synthesis. Regarding the debate between traditional and modern cuisine, he said the following: "There are only two types of cuisine: good and bad. And good cuisines, there is the cuisine of judgment and that of the jewel. The one of judgment is made in Montseny and the one of the jewel is made in Montjoi." And we ended the event with rock 'n' roll and with Albert Adrià reminding us to come in, that Julio would have been at the bar for a while.