Nos ha dejado Pere Barceló.

Pere Barceló has left us.

He left too soon, surrounded by the love of his family and the affection and company of his friends.

He was brilliant and charismatic. He combined intelligence, foresight, and practical sense with great management ability, which made all his initiatives successful.

He was the youngest ever President of SER. With his drive he managed to inspire and attract highly valuable colleagues to his Project who were equally determined to make the Society a useful benchmark for Spanish rheumatology in its entirety. That Board laid the foundations of what we are now, providing the Society with scientific soundness and economic stability. In fact, 1992 was the first year in which our accounts were in surplus.

Professionally, he has left an indelible mark, devoting himself with the same brilliance to management and clinical practice, both in public and private medicine. In the former, he reorganised the rheumatology service at Vall d’Hebron hospital, making it one of the most important in Spain. In the private sphere, in addition to maintaining rheumatological care in the Clínica Platón, he created Reumatek and the rheumatology service of the Sagrat Cor hospital, where, until the end, he invested his entire capacity, experience and passion for medicine and patients.

We have known each other almost from the very start of his professional activity at the National Centre for the Fight against Rheumatic Diseases (later the Hospital de Malalties Reumàtiques). Since then, we were always close and I followed him in some of his companies, enjoying a colleague, boss (in Vall d’Hebron) and in every situation, at work and outside it, a loyal friend and good man. Now, like all of us who were close to him, his loss leaves me with an intense and painful sense of emptiness.

Dear Pedro, every afternoon, in the clinic, I turn out lights that have been left on unnecessarily here and there, as you used to do. “It’s something I can’t stand” you used to say, half joking, half serious. The lights that you left on, initiative, responsibility, love of the specialty and work, devotion to patients… will not go out, because they are an example for everyone, and will always be with us, together with your memory.

Thank you for everything you have shared over so many years.