“Luckily, foreigners come to La Boqueria to buy from us, because the Maries don't do it anymore.”

Barcelona"I'm happy about the award, but it's not coming at the best time of my life," fruit seller Eduard Soley (Barcelona, ​​1947) tells me at his home, where we met for the interview. The sadness that accompanies the joy is due to an illness, but it will pass, and the award will remain. Furthermore, he really liked the way he found out he was receiving this award given by the Friends of the Rambla Association: "First, my president, Jordi Mas, from La Boqueria, called me; and then, the president of the Association," he explains.

The vendor at the Soley-Roser Fruit stand, located at the entrance to the Boqueria market, started working at the age of 17.We were Pinocchio, Carmen from the Gomà bacalanería and I, the three oldest in the market."Now it's just Carmen and me," she says, adding that she retired thirteen years ago, but she's still working. "I have my son, named Jaume like my father, and my two grandchildren, Joel and Joana, working." Her daughter, Mari Àngels, studied journalism and labor.

Every day, his son and grandchildren set up the stall, which takes between an hour and an hour and a half. At night, around seven in the evening, they unpack it. Eduard occasionally goes to the Catalunya library to look for old newspapers, which they save for him, because he uses them to carve them and place them under the melons and watermelons. "I have melons and watermelons all year round, but I give them the right ripeness, and I do that with cut newspapers; on the contrary, I ripen the rest of the fruit with glossy paper," he comments. And right at this point, he stops and talks about fruit and how to buy it: "In the past, the Marías knew how to buy fruit; they chose one or another according to the ripeness they liked, but they're no longer in the market because they've grown up or are in nursing homes." Soley also maintains that the generation below the women who used to go to the market doesn't know how to buy fruit; and he assures this because they don't ask the sellers anything.

The Bordeta bus at La Boqueria

These Señora Marías, as Eduard Soley calls them, were women who shopped at the market several times a week. Many arrived on a bus that brought them from the Bordeta neighborhood, "a bus that picked up people from other neighborhoods and took them to La Boqueria." Today, that bus no longer exists. "We fought so hard to get it here," he says.

The Fruites Soley-Roser market stall dates back to 1864 (the date it was granted to the paternal family), and the history of the foundation requires drawing a family tree because both the maternal and paternal families are involved. On the one hand, his father, Jaume Soley, had a market stall that ran from his great-grandmother. On the other, his mother had a grandfather who also had a small market, where he sold the vegetables of the Marquis of Castelldosrius, who had vegetable gardens on Diagonal, in Corbera de Llobregat, and up to twenty other estates with vineyards. The bus stop on his mother's side was a concession from Barcelona City Council to the Marquis of Castelldosrius, who eventually gave it to Eduard Soley's maternal family. The parents met while working in their respective positions, and there they fell in love. "They didn't have an easy life, because they suffered during the Civil War; my father lost his mother at fourteen; then he had to serve six years of military service, and he died very young, in 1964," says Soley, who remembers that he was seventeen when his father died. His mother also had a very hard life, which still moves Eduard today because of everything she experienced during the Civil War in Barcelona.

With the death of his father, Eduard went to work at the bus stop, along with his mother and a trusted woman, Carmeta. It was then that he met the eldest son. Ramon Cabau, who acted as a father to him, showing him the world, what the market was like, etc. "The stall wasn't what it is now; it was small back then; and it's named Soley-Roser, after my father's surname and also my grandmother's, who was named Roser." If the stall is larger today, it's because they were able to combine their mother's stall with their father's, and they were even able to acquire another one. "In the old photos, we appear at a stall on the corner, but over time, we moved back a few further, to where we are now," says Soley.

With this history described, the seller focuses on the present. "Everything has changed; the culture, too, because there's a lot of culture in the market, from all over the world, and it's reflected in what people ask for when they buy." At Fruites Soley, they've always been very attentive, and that's why they sell up to more than sixty different chili peppers, and many people buy from them, "because 80% of the world's population eats spicy food, and they know I have ingredients they won't find anywhere else," he says, adding that it's true that Catalan culture doesn't have much pine. "My mother, Encarnación Castellví, used to add a little bit of "capipota," but it's lucky that foreigners come to buy from us at La Boqueria, because the Maries don't do it anymore." Now, the Maries ladies, as the vendor insists on telling the women who were in charge of shopping and cooking, "buy their food pre-made or at the supermarket next door, because that way they can pick up the children from school, carry the food next door, and go home." In other words, "Barcelona residents have stopped coming to the market because they don't cook, so I'm lucky for the foreigners, who leave me ten or twenty euros per purchase, and also lucky for the kind I come from, which no one else has." Eduard Soley maintains that he, too, has always cooked, despite his insistence on women who cook.

Now that it's autumn, he already has quinces, pomegranates, chestnuts, sweet potatoes, jujubes, tangerines, and oranges for sale. Some come from his gardens, which he cultivates with four local farmers. She also sells pre-cut fruit, and "in a day, you can sell up to two hundred jars." In fact, the story of how the market began selling to us is closely linked to her stall. "It all started with a woman from another stall, Pilar, who wanted to sell more produce at her stall, and she told me that she had the idea of cutting it and putting it on sale," she recalls. Eduard suggested it to her, because he has always had a very good relationship with the stallholders, and that woman sold it by placing it in a stainless steel container. Pilar's idea worked, and it spread like wildfire. Today, there are countless stalls selling pre-cut fruit, and many other products ready to be taken away and eaten.

Linked to this initiative by the stallholder who asked Eduard Soley for fruit to sell at his stand is another fact. "In 2000, with the then-president of the Boqueria market, we made trips to European cities, where we imported our products and also where we visited markets; there we realized that the trend was to sell prepared-to-eat products," he says. In other words, it wasn't all a coincidence; rather, Eduard assures us that they took "notes from what the markets in Florence, London, Turin, and Milan were doing, and we applied them." All of this was in 2000, when they made the trips, and they understood that this was the evolution they needed to make.

To conclude, I ask Eduard about two topics. One is still about the Boqueria market, and the new regulations that they want to apply, which establish that the stalls will necessarily have to sell fresh products"I don't believe it," he says, and repeats it over and over again. The second topic: what is the favorite fruit of the man who has been selling at La Boqueria the longest. And the answer is: custard apple, which is the gateway to Andalusia, and he likes it very ripe. In fact, he eats all fruit ripe, even when it's at that point where it looks like it's going bad. That's when he likes it the most. "I eat custard apple with the skin, just like figs, ripe, with the skin and on bread; pomegranates, with sweet wine." And so Eduard Soley continues, underlining the greatness of La Boqueria. "It's the horn of plenty; there's everything, the best fresh produce, and it has a very bright future," he concludes.