On May 26, 1948, Dr. Alexander Fleming arrived in Barcelona. Three years earlier he had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for one of the most healing discoveries in history: penicillin. His host was Dr. Trias de Bes, director of the Hospital de Nuestra Señora del Mar in Barcelona.
The newspaper archives of La Vanguardia allow us to follow his stay in the city in detail until he left for Seville on 7 June, with daily reports of all his conferences and activities from morning to night, from his walks along the Rambla to his excursion to Montserrat.
In the chronicle of Monday, May 31, 1948, the arrival of Sir Alexander Fleming at the Hospital of Our Lady of the Sea at 12:00 is recounted, accompanied by the director of the British Institute. At 12:20 “he went to the new conference room of the Hospital of Infectious Diseases, a facility that was precisely inaugurated with the lecture of the learned British researcher.” At 12:30 “he began his lecture, which dealt with the subject of “Some aspects of septic wounds”. After detailing the content of the conference, the journalist informs us that “surrounded by general admiration and by his Barcelona colleagues, the distinguished researcher went to the upper floor, and he was offered a glass of Spanish wine in the Library”.
And in the following paragraph of the chronicle we are told that “in the evening, Dr. Luis Trías de Bes and his wife entertained Sir Alexander Fleming and Lady Fleming with a dinner at their private residence.”
In this chronicle that followed his visit minute by minute, there is a jump from that aperitif at the library to dinner. La Vanguardia did not want to alarm its readers with the news that the great scientist had been missing for several hours.
Esencia Barceloneta is in a position to clarify this mysterious disappearance thanks to access to a source that had been silent for decades: until its “deep throat” was anointed with the anchovies in vinegar that they make at the Moll del Rebaix and softened with a few sips of rosé.
This person, who wishes to remain anonymous, explained to me that when Fleming was served a glass of wine in the hospital library, he frowned and the waiter noticed. Having served on a shipping line between Santander and Plymouth years before, he knew some English. The illustrious scientist told him that they had been pumping him full of wine for five days. He would give anything for a beer.
Our informant tells us that the waiter and Fleming looked at each other. The waiter, everyone called Cisco from Cal Guitar, shouted so that everyone would hear him as he was showing the way to the gentleman’s service. When they went out into the hallway, he quickened his pace and told him to follow him. They left through the hospital’s merchandise entrance and headed towards Barceloneta.
Before reaching the cinnamon tree where Carmen Amaya’s fountain would later be, he entered Encarni’s tavern and the patrons were astonished to see Cisco with a man so well dressed and whiter than milk. Mrs. Encarnación slapped the bar: “But this man appeared in the newspaper today! He is an eminence! He has saved more lives than Agustina de Aragón!”
Cisco told him the man needed a beer, and four or five of them rushed to the bar to buy him one. What happened was that he had a line of half a dozen at once. And Fleming drank one. Then he said he was going to have the last one. But one of them started singing one of those sweet habaneras and he drank the third one. By the fourth Professor Fleming was singing habaneras as if he had been born in Cuba.
When they returned to the hospital it was five in the afternoon and when Cisco saw that there were eleven police cars at the door, he said goodbye with a hug and a promise of eternal friendship. At the hospital door there was even the president of the Provincial Council together with the chief commissioner of Barcelona. They asked him nervously if he had been kidnapped but when they saw that he was laughing and that he was weak, they decided that he should take a nap in the bed of the doctors on duty. They had to wake him up at the right time to get to dinner with the hospital director.
This is what our informant explained, between anchovies and a sip of wine, because he was told it by a nephew of Cisco. And we explained this truth to you.
