Barcelona doctor Oriol Domènec Llavallol is about to turn 103 on 9 November, and the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya (CEC) will begin its 150th-anniversary celebrations on 26 November. He is the oldest member of the club, and member number one.

Domènec, an otorhinolaryngologist and surgeon, has spent much of his life between Barcelona and far-flung places such as Antarctica, Patagonia and Ushuaia. He spoke from his home on Diagonal avenue in Barcelona about a life shaped by medicine, mountaineering and anti-fascist activism.

In the 1940s, he took part in anti-fascist actions in Barcelona. He said he hung Catalan flags in the Palau de la Música, Sagrada Família, Montserrat and other places. That activism led to his imprisonment and later flight from the city.

After leaving prison, he worked at Sant Pau hospital before heading to Argentina with a false passport belonging to his deceased cousin, Eduard Font Domènec. In Buenos Aires, he answered an advert for doctors willing to work in Antarctica, and was accepted.

His Antarctic posting took him to Half Moon Island. When a Chilean nurse on Greenwich Island broke his leg and developed gangrene, Domènec said the team crossed a frozen sea by sledge to the Captain Arturo Prat base. He amputated the leg and saved the patient, then stayed with him for several days until an Argentine ship arrived.

His work in the region also included treating diphtheria on another vessel and climbing Mount Plymouth on Greenwich Island. That expedition earned him a front-page feature in La Vanguardia on 22 April 1954. He later returned to Europe, where he reconnected with Mercedes Elizalde, whom he had met while doing charity work in the Besòs shantytowns.

Mercedes, ten years younger than him, escaped Barcelona to meet him in Vigo. The couple swam across the Miño river into Portugal and married in Lisbon in October 1956, against her family’s wishes. Authorities later detained Mercedes, then 23, and sent her back to Barcelona because the age of majority was 25. She was placed in a centre for rebellious girls on Roger de Flor street.

They reunited in Patagonia once Mercedes turned 25. Domènec said they both learned to fly small planes in Ushuaia. The couple bought a sheep farm called Canigó, which grew to 20,000 hectares. One of their five children now runs the farm. Their first two children died young, and Mercedes died in 2013.

Back in South America, Domènec also worked as a doctor in Ushuaia and Río Gallegos, and took a risky trip into the Paraguayan jungle. He later continued his medical career in Barcelona. He said his last operation was at 90 years and one month.

He also remains closely tied to the mountains. He began climbing in Catalonia with Mossèn Batlle, visiting Figaró and Montserrat, and climbed peaks including Cavall Bernat on 4 September 1943, La Mòmia, La Prenyada and Pedraforca. In 2022, after the death of mountaineer Carme Romeu at 101, he became the CEC’s most senior member. He says hard work has been the key to his longevity.