The warrior’s rest

I have always thought that working with Santiago Grisolía is described in the poetry «Castilla» by Manuel Machado: D. Santiago was demanding with himself and with how many disciples he recruited, like the twelve of his own by the Cid in the poem. And he was for science or for society. Thus, all of us who had the honor of accompanying him in the process, the fellows that he trained for years both in Madison and in Kansas City or at the Cytological Research Institute, have the scientific rigor and passion for discovering that he inherited from D. Severo . But we are tough on the deal. Hardworking, demanding, passionate about the projects we tackle. Those were some of his qualities. Perhaps the most important was his ability to seduce, because it was impossible to say no when he insisted that you do something. And as complicated as the task was, you ended up feeling honored that he had entrusted it to you. Prof. Grisolía was loved by most of his scholars and the young people who altruistically contributed to the formation of the Valencian Foundation for Advanced Studies and the Rei Jaume I Awards Foundation. Among them in the United States there were always Spaniards, like Enrique de la Morena, José Carreras, María Cascales or Vicente Rubio and Consuelo Guerri. And he returned to Spain with the task of transforming a leading center for clinical diagnosis, where there was a small research redoubt with scientists capable, for example, of discovering the unfairly named Philadelphia chromosome, responsible for a type of leukaemia, into a leading center for research in the then innovative areas of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. D. Santiago was tireless. In the 1970s and 1980s, he combined the direction of the Institute of Cytological Research with the informative activity in the Valencian Foundation for Advanced Studies and with his enormous work as advisor to the Ministry of Health and as President of UNESCO for the Human Genome Project. I remember that in the year 2000 he and his wife went to Namibia for some meetings on the Genome and, on their return to Valencia, at six in the afternoon, after eleven hours of travel, they both came straight from the airport to the Foundation, with the suitcases, and D. Santiago met with us until after ten o’clock at night to see how the Foundation’s activities were going, while Dª Frances waited undaunted in an armchair next to the suitcases. I remember that on Sundays, at the Cytology, he would arrive in the morning and go into the library to read articles from the recently arrived magazines. Along with us the interns. He loved the lab. Even this past year, he was telling me how much he missed the hours spent in the lab crystallizing proteins, isolating compounds, or finding cures for diseases. He was one of the first to support associations for rare diseases, as the College of Pharmacists of Seville recalls. He has been fighting an unknown virus, silently, without wanting to disturb. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elena Bendala-Tufanisco Disciple of Prof. Grisolía and Director of Institutional Relations of the Valencian Foundation for Advanced Studies