Early in Xavier Moret’s book An American in Barcelona, a young boy is riding with his grandfather on the No. 22 tram car on a Sunday morning….. and when they reach Pedrables, a part of the city best known for its Gothic monastery, he sees a statue of a goddess clutching a laurel wreath of victory/achievement, with its plaque dedicated “A Pearson” [i.e., “To Pearson”]. That gives the grandfather an opportunity to begin the story — as the sub-title of the book notes — of “Dr. Pearson, The Man Who Brought Light to Catalonia.”

Dr. Frederick Stark Pearson

Frederick Stark Pearson was an electrical engineer from Massachusetts who also had considerable financial skills. After gaining experience with both Boston’s and New York City’s transit systems, he played a key role in bringing electric power generation and electrically-powered transit systems to cities around the world (e.g., Rio de Janiero, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, etc.). He incorporated the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company in 1911, and was soon developing major hydropower systems to supply the city with electricity – until, at the age of 54, he & his wife met an unfortunate end as passengers on the Lusitania.

I was reading Moret’s book on this Barcelona trip, and while it’s billed as an ‘inspirational novel’ on Amazon (& the author himself calls it a ‘novel’ within the text), that’s not really the case. Instead, it is clearly a non-fiction piece of work, with only about half of the book about Pearson himself; the other half is self-referential, about a journalist writing a book about Pearson.

I didn’t remember reading anything about the engineer in Erik Larson’s Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania – and a check of that book came up with nothing at all [& given the depth of research about interesting characters that Larson always brings to his books, it‘s definitely surprising there wasn’t any mention]. Pearson’s grandson refused to talk at all with Moret…. or even to discuss the long-gone engineer with members of his own family, who wanted to know more about their illustrious forebear. The technical organization IEEE does have some limited historical information about him – and Moret’s book is an interesting read, despite its constraints.

Pedrables Pearson tribute

The No. 22 tram no longer runs to Pedrables, but the No. 68 bus does….. & so I headed out on a beautiful, sunny Barcelona morning to check things out. I initially missed the stop… & hence got to see a lot more of this scenic city and its suburbs than intended! But I didn’t really learn anything more about Dr. Pearson — who remains a brilliant & capable engineering enigma, I’m afraid.