Elena Barraquer: "You can always find a reason to be happy"

Elena Barraquer (Barcelona, 1954) specializes in cataract surgery and cornea transplantation. In 2012, she received the Medal of Honor of Barcelona and in 2018, she was recognized with the Queen Sophia Spanish Institute Award in its Excellence Awards category. She defines herself as a happy person even in times of pandemic: "You can always find a reason to be happy. If the children in Africa who have nothing find it, how can we not find it. Being an ophthalmologist is one of the reasons I am happy. I like my job, being able to help others. The feeling of restoring sight to someone is a high in Spain, imagine in Africa. Once in Dakar, I operated on a rapper for bilateral white cataract and he dedicated a rap to me."

Restless since childhood, she reveals that when she finished her residency, she met an Italian ophthalmologist whom she followed to Italy and smiles as she confesses that she has no vocation for marriage because she separated again. It was then that she decided to return to Barcelona with her two children and her father suggested she come to work with him. "It was eleven years in the United States and thirteen in Italy. I left at 23 and returned at 48. Barcelona is a friendly city and it was a sweet return."

"At first I was a little scared. When I arrived, I spent a couple of weeks observing the clinic's working method. My father offered me the office that had been my grandfather's, on whose door there was a capital letter 'b' and since then I've been here." Brave in her words and in her actions: "I've never been afraid to jump into the deep end, to do new things," she admits.

The Elena Barraquer Foundation

When her father Joaquín Barraquer died in 2016, she made a very important decision. "I had been part of the Barraquer Foundation for thirteen years, but the new board took a more local direction and wanted to stop operating in Africa. Upon learning of the new guidelines, I decided to set up the Elena Barraquer Foundation. I am very practical and the most direct way to help people is to go there and operate on as many people as possible. In addition, we have scholarship doctors in several African countries who have previously spent six months in our clinic in Barcelona learning."

The NGO led by Elena Barraquer organizes one-week trips and needs to raise funds to reach an annual budget of half a million euros. The website fundacionleneabarraquer.com offers the possibility of helping with donations, signing up as volunteers, or buying from the solidarity shop. 2020 has been a very tough year in which all charitable activities with which they usually raise funds have had to be canceled and, for this reason, they have reinforced the shop which is nourished by donations such as "these eighteen boxes of Mango that have just arrived".

The offices of the Elena Barraquer Foundation, at Calaf street number 3 in Barcelona, are full of shelves where the material they need for expeditions is stored. The team is made up of Elena herself, who divides her time between the clinic and the Foundation; Teté Ferreiro, who directs the Foundation; María Bertrán, who coordinates the expeditions, and three instrumentalists from the clinic. Only women, although some surgeons usually join the trips.

We enter the intimacy of this NGO when the pandemic has disrupted all plans but, despite this, they do not lose heart. "Pre-covid we used to do twelve expeditions a year; one every four weeks. The last one we did was to Mozambique. The idea is that I go on half of the trips, but the coronavirus has changed the agenda." In a normal year, the solidarity shop finances the structural expenses of the Foundation and they organize all kinds of charitable events, from concerts to golf tournaments. Nena, her Golden Retriever, greets everyone who comes to the shop with a wagging tail, which has now become the only source of income along with donations.

Senegal, next destination

Doctora Barraquer is very optimistic: "We will reappear at the end of February like the Phoenix with a trip to Senegal scheduled for February 20. The vaccine is fundamental for us to reactivate and, in Africa, they don't have many contagions; the population is very young and they are very used to epidemics." She admits without complexes that "I am the most senior" and will travel to Senegal with Joaquín Fernández, an ophthalmologist from Almería who is a trustee of the foundation, and with whom she plans to operate a hundred cataracts every day.

Her adventures in Africa are always endorsed by local people. "Sometimes local NGOs help us and other times we are invited by the first ladies of the country, who act as our ambassadors and take care of local logistics, maintenance, and travel. We have grown a lot. For example, the first lady of Senegal knows us well and awaits us with open arms."

The enormous backpacks with which they travel, buying eighty-five percent of the material they need, eagerly await the trip to Senegal. The Foundation was born with a traveling vocation and is counting the hours to get its engines running at full speed again.