Pere Gabarró

Pere Gabarró i Garcia was a Catalan doctor. 

In 1939 he went into exile in England , where he was head of plastic surgery at several hospitals. He specialized in face repairs, and developed a new type of graft called a checkerboard or Gabarró checkerboard graft or Gabarró postage stamp. He has been considered the father of plastic surgery in Catalonia and Spain. A mountain lover, in 1932 he opened the Via Gabarró, a new access road to Pica d'Estats .

Pere Gabarró was born at number 6 on Rambla Nova in Igualada on January 1, 1899, the last of the twelve children of Aleix Gabarró i Castelló and Teresa Garcia i Fossas. The three older brothers, Adolf, Romulus and Màrius, were the only ones who survived childhood. The father, Aleix Gabarró, had a playing card factory in Igualada and the mother, Teresa, was the sister of Jaume and Artur , the well-known Garcia Fossas brothers. At the age of 9, he lost his father, and his mother took him to Barcelona to study. In 1914 he obtained his bachelor's degree at the Institute of Barcelona , ​​and due to family pressure he studied Pharmacy at the University of Barcelona , ​​where he graduated in 1918. He took advantage of the medical books of the son of the owner of the pharmacy where he worked to start his medical career in 1916, which he finished in 1923. He was admitted to the College of Physicians of Barcelona in 1924. 

He began practicing as a doctor in 1924, establishing his practice in Barcelona 's Passeig de Sant Joan . In 1928 he married Josefina Viader and they had two daughters and a son. He was an assistant professor of practices of Legal Medicine and Toxicology (1923-25), of Topographic Anatomy and Operations (1929-30) and of Surgical Pathology I and II (1930-33). He was a member of the Surgical Therapy clinic at the Hospital Clínic directed by the surgeon Joan Puig i Sureda . He became interested in abdominal surgery and in the early 1930s he published his first works on plastic surgery.

He was a member of Palestra , an educational and patriotic Catalan organization founded in 1930, and a member of the Society of Surgery of Barcelona, ​​created in 1927 and called the Society of Surgery of Catalonia in 1933. In this society, he led the publication in Catalan of Bulletin of the Society of Surgery of Catalonia , which until then was in Spanish. He gave the speech In defense of the exclusive use of Catalan in all publications of the Society of Surgery of Catalonia , which led to Catalan being the only language of the Society. His commitment to medical Catalanism was also manifested in his participation as secretary of the Historical Research and Research Committee of theAssociation of Catalan Language Doctors and Biologists and the promotion of the study of the history of Catalan surgery. He participated in the X International Congress of the History of Medicine, held in Madrid in 1935, in tribute to Antoni de Gimbernat within the eighth Congress of Doctors and Biologists of the Catalan Language (1934) and was deputy secretary in the ninth Congress, held in Perpignan in 1936.

During the Spanish Civil War he was a military doctor on the Republican side and acquired great surgical knowledge, especially in the restoration of the face. He was a representative of Acció Catalana Republicana in the War Health Council of the Generalitat de Catalunya and was later appointed commander of the army and head of the surgical team. During the war he organized the care of the burned in the republican part of Catalonia and Valencia. He was assigned to the Aragon front (in Codo , Puebla de Híjar and Barbastre ) and from 1938 to several Catalan hospitals, from Gandesa toSanta Coloma de Farners and, finally, on the hospital train that took him to exile on February 5, 1939. 

He fled to France and fifteen days later to England, first to London and finally to Manchester , where he worked for 3 years with Sir Harold Gillies , considered the father of plastic surgery. Thanks to his skill as a draftsman he was able to enter the Guillies school without having to pay. In return he drew Guillies' operating diagrams. During the Second World War he worked with Dr. Archibald McIndoe , chief surgeon of the Royal Air Force , treating aviation burns.  Appointed Senior Surgeonfor the British government, for 5 years I directed the plastic surgery services of the Baguley Emergency Hospital, the Christie Hospital and the Holt Radium Institute. He developed a new type of tissue graft , called checkerboard or postage stamp , which he published in the British Medical Journal and the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1943 and 1944. These are laminar grafts cut into small squares, from one large piece, and placed with a small separation between them, so that a larger area of ​​skin is covered, and, at the same time, the exudate can flow in case to occur. He was a founding partner of theBritish Association of Plastic Surgeons (1946), he collaborated in the British Medical Journal Surgery and was one of the founders of the Casal Català de Londres.

In March 1947 he returned to Barcelona to meet his wife, children and mother. He received permission to work with Dr. Joan Puig i Sureda and Jaume Pi i Figueras, at the Sant Pau Hospital and the Corachan Clinic. He was a delegate of the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (1950-52). He was a founding member and first president of the Catalan Society of Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery, then a section of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands (1961-1965). From 1962 he collaborated withJosep Alsina and Bofill in the creation of a program of activities for the Catalan Society of Biology. 

He was one of the founders of the scout movement in Catalonia, along with Josep Maria Batista i Roca , and practiced hiking. He was one of the promoters of the Minions de Muntanya created in 1927 and was a member of the Center Excursionista de Catalunya. As a doctor, he published writings aimed at the hiking public. In July 1932 he opened via Gabarró, a new access road to the Pica d'Estats by a different path from the classic Port de Sotllo.

He died on May 4, 1980 in Barcelona, ​​after swimming in the swimming pools of the Barcelona Swimming Club.