Edu Marín Sends ‘Donec Perficiam’ (5.14a/b), Proposes the Iberian Trilogy

In the early evening of May 28, 2025, more than 1,000 feet up from the turquoise river that carves out Catalonia from the rest of Spain, Edu Marin squints up at the final pitch of his dream project.

He’s losing light. His mouth is dry; he ran out of water four pitches earlier, at the fourth-pitch crux. But only one 5.13b section separates him from completing Donec Perficiam, a 5.14a/b mixed route on the Mont-Rebei Gorge’s Aragón Wall that had never been freed.

“I had only tried the last pitch twice before,” says Marín, “and when I arrived, I didn’t remember what to do.”

For the past month, Marín has been piecing together the eight pitches of 5.11d to 5.14b into a one-day free ascent. Donec is supremely runout, with “probably eight to 10 meters between bolts or cams,” according to Marín. But the elite Spanish climber, who once took a screaming, forty-foot whipper on Valhalla (5.15a) in Getu, China, was more concerned about the sun aspect. “It’s only shady at 3pm and nightfall comes at 9 or 9:30pm, so I have to rush to arrive at the top with light,” he says.

After nearly five hours of effort, Marín is exhausted. Three quarters of Donec’s pitches are 8a/5.13b or harder. He’s spent most of the last few weeks memorizing the lower parts; he simply doesn’t remember the final sequence. And when his hands start cramping, he slips off, falling more than twenty-five feet into the air before his rope catches on a piton.

“If I fell a second time, I probably couldn’t do it,” he says. A “light and fast” strategy left him with an empty water bottle.

But there’s still time for one more try. Marín lowers to the base of the last pitch, takes a few seconds to breathe, and starts again.

Back on the Rocks

For the past two years, the 5.15 sport climber has taken a step back from projects abroad to focus on a different goal: opening his own climbing gym in Catalonia. “When I was a kid 30 years ago in Spain, I remember there weren’t many nice climbing gyms,” Marín tells Climbing. “Later, when I was 17 or 18 and started competing in World Cups, I needed to travel to other countries like Italy, France, Austria, and Germany for nice climbing gyms because in Spain and Barcelona, we didn’t have them.”

Marín describes himself as a formerly “fat kid” who experienced bullying when he was in middle school. Then, around age 12, he started climbing thanks to his father, Francisco “Novato” Marín. “I fell in love with the sport,” says Marín. “In one year, I probably lost 16 kilos (35 pounds) and started to climb more and more.” Luckily, one of the few climbing gyms in Spain was just 10 minutes away from Marín’s home. “This was a light in my life,” he says. “It was a privilege to climb and get into the sport. I’d love to give this opportunity to other kids—to people who grow up in a city.”

In 2023, fresh from making the first repeat of Eternal Flame (VI 7c+/5.13a; 2,100 ft) on Nameless Tower in Pakistan, Marín began construction on the gym with his brother Alex and his friend, Marco Jubes. They acquired a 15,000-square-foot facility in Lleida, a small city in western Catalonia that is surrounded by some of Spain’s best climbing: Margalef, Santa Linya, and Oliana. In a documentary about the gym’s construction, Marín calls Lleida “the mecca of sport climbing.”

Preparing the building required extensive manual demolition. Initially, Marín tried to train for his hardest sport project yet, Chris Sharma’s Stoking the Fire (9b/5.15b), in between smashing down walls with a sledgehammer and moving heavy equipment. But the intense physical labor left him vulnerable to overtraining. Marín eventually suffered a pulley injury and decided to focus on just one thing: completing the gym.

On October 5, 2024, Marín and his partners opened Fanatic Lleida to jubilant crowds. “It was another dream come true,” he says. Six days later, he announced on Facebook that he would be returning to hard sport climbing. “After two years of building Fanatic, I return to the mountains, with new projects and motivations,” he wrote. “Let the games begin!”

Solving the Missing Link

This spring, Marín wanted to keep working Stoking the Fire, but rain made the season “impossible,” according to his April 14 Instagram post. Instead, he sent Catxasa (9a+/5.15a) on April 12, matching his hardest grade ever. Then he turned his attention to Donec Perficiam.

“You need to imagine two walls almost 400 meters (1,000 feet) tall, one in front of the other,” he says. “One of the walls is in Catalonia and the other wall is in Aragón. It’s so beautiful because you’re climbing up from the river and you’re looking in front of you at the river, too. Between the pitches, these big vultures are flying close to you. It’s super cool.”

Watch Marín work the moves on Donec Perficiam in this video:

On May 28, when Marín attempts the last pitch for the second time, he doesn’t fall. Instead, he tops out Donec with the first free ascent of what is now the hardest multi-pitch in Mont-Rebei.

When Marín talks about Donec, he gushes about the ground-up ethic of the first ascensionists, Carles Brasco and Isaac Cortés. “These guys took five years to open the route,” he says. “They climbed from the floor with their drill in hand. It’s one of the more incredible ethics I’ve seen.” Studying the first aid ascent, he says, has convinced him to prioritize process over accomplishment. “We need to do things with passion and time,” he says. “It’s more important how you do things than what you do. That’s a good mantra for me and for the new generation.” Going forward, Marín says that he would love to repeat the style of bolting on lead. “It’s something new to me,” he says. “I need to spend probably months or years in this new style.”

It’s only later, after he sent Donec, that he realized that the route is the missing piece to another one of his lifelong dreams: establishing the “Iberian Trilogy.”

What’s in the Trilogy?

“When I was a kid, I had my idols, and I was really inspired by the Alpine Trilogy,” says Marín. Most recently completed by Robbie Phillips, the Alpine Trilogy consists of three long 5.14 routes in the Alps, each put up in 1994: Silbergeier (8b+/5.14a) in Switzerland, End of Silence (8b+/5.14a) in Germany, and Des Kaisers neue Kleider (8b+/5.14a) in Austria. “Thirty years later, I had the idea to make the Iberian Trilogy, not just for myself—sure, it’s for myself, because I climb for me—but for the next generation of adventurers,” says Marín. “I started to think about it; I chose the most beautiful and emblematic lines in Spain.”

Marín chose Orbayu (8c/5.14b; 1,670 ft) in Picos de Europa, in the north of Spain, and Arco Iris (8c+/5.14c; 650 ft) in Montserrat, near Barcelona, as the other two multi-pitch routes in the Iberian Trilogy. Now that it’s been freed, Donec Perficiam rounds out the list.

The world’s best sport climbers know both Orbayu and Arco Iris as challenging test pieces. In 2009, Iker and Eneko Pou made the first free ascent of Orbayu at 8c+/9a or 5.14c/d, making it the hardest multi-pitch in the world, but it was later downgraded to 8c/5.14b. Iker Pou called it “the most important route we’ve ever climbed.” Taken literally, orbayu is a mistlike rain in northern Spain’s Basque country, where the Pou brothers were born. Cédric Lachat, who sent Orbayu in 2014, wrote in a blog post that one major difficulty to sending was finding a window to climb between the orbayu and the sun. “It’s a fine drizzle that resembles a harmless fog, but gets you drenched in seconds,” he reported. In 2015, Marín made the fifth repeat of the route, calling it “one of the best quality rocks in the world.” So far, eight men have sent the climb.

“Donec Perficiam is really similar to Orbayu in style,” says Marín. “It’s a little bit overhanging but it’s more technical. Both are alpine multipitches, which means you need to protect many pitches with gear. You have scary runouts, and you need to be comfortable with that.”

The other route, Arco Iris, is the hardest multi-pitch climb in Spain. Marín himself nabbed the first ascent in 2020. Compared to Orbayu and Donec Perficiam, it’s more overhanging and powerful. Even though it features up to 15-meter (50-foot) runouts between bolts, Marín calls it “not exactly alpine style” because it’s all bolted protection. Still, the conglomerate rock type is one of the best he’s climbed. “It’s kind of crazy because when you start to climb, you’re scared [the rock] will break, but after a few days, you realize it’s safe and then you start to climb well.” Currently, Seb Berthé is the only other person to free Arco Iris.

When asked which other climbers he hopes will repeat the Trilogy, Marín names Berthé directly. “Honestly, I find it hard to be inspired by the next generation,” he says, “but this guy is one of the next-gen climbers that inspires me more for his style, ethic, and mental power.”

But regardless of who ends up making the second ascent of the Trilogy, Marín emphasizes the importance of climbing in the moment, not chasing grades or rushing through the routes. “We live in a digital society, one of immediacy and stress, and this type of project makes you reconnect with your essence, with nature,” he muses. “In this type of process, you need to take the time to appreciate the simple things—to be with your partner or with your father, to reconnect. After every project, I feel happier and I feel gratitude for the time I spent there. I think it’s a good message for people who spend so many hours in the digital world.”

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