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Joaquín Català Payà (Alcoi, 18/5/1894 - Alcoi, 23/2/1937)

 

Joaquín Català Payà
Detail of photograph preserved in the Arxiu Històric de la UV
Signature: AUV. Donated by Català Payà. Album, nº 31

Joaquín Catalá was born into an Alcoy family of artisans and farmers. He studied high school at the Luis Vives Academy in Alcoy, and given the ability he showed, his parents made the effort to send him to study medicine in Valencia (a career that his two brothers also followed later on).

In 1918 he graduated from the University of Valencia with an extraordinary degree prize, which gave him a scholarship to specialise in surgery and do his doctorate in Madrid, at the prestigious Rubio Institute (also known as the Institute of Operative Therapeutics or the Moncloa Clinic). It was also at this same institute that he met his future wife, who was studying nursing.

After obtaining his doctorate at the Central University of Madrid, with a dissertation entitled Radioterapia de los fibromiomas uterinos (Radiotherapy of uterine fibromyomas), he returned to Alcoy, where in 1921 he opened his own practice and a year later he also became a doctor at the Oliver Hospital. His specialisation in gynaecology and surgery (and later also in X-rays) meant that he had a wide clientele. He also worked as a surgeon in the local bullring, and treated the workers of industries in the area, such as Hidroeléctrica or Papeleras Reunidas.

With the arrival of the Civil War, he was arrested several times by Republican militiamen, despite the fact that he was not affiliated to any political party or association, until the last arrest, in 1937, when he was executed without trial along with eight other prisoners in the Círculo Industrial de Alcoy prison.

After the execution, of which the family was not informed, the bodies were taken away and buried elsewhere. They were only found two years later, after the war was over, when the driver who made the transfers confessed.

 

Donation

The Catalá Payá family donated to the University of Valencia not only the library (made up mainly of books by Joaquín, but also others by his brothers Miguel and Antonio) but also their medical records, instruments, office furniture and even the waiting room furniture, which gives us a very clear picture of what the professional practice of a doctor in a provincial town of the time was like.

The museum objects are kept in the museum of the López Piñero Interuniversity Institute and in other collections of the UV, while his books can be consulted in our library. This bibliographic legacy comprises around three hundred works in some 400 volumes, mostly works on surgery and gynaecology in Spanish (there are also some twenty in French) published at the beginning of the 20th century, although the publication dates go up to the 1970s with some material.

The works that make up the donation bear the this holding reference:

 

Works at the Catalogue of the University of Valencia

We do not have any works by him as an author, but a doctoral thesis on his biography and role is available at the Deposit Library.