In science he is best known as historian of philosophy and author of a monumental work on 16th century Spanish thinkers, though he contributed also to history, theory of law and theology.

The Solana family was first recorded in the 13th century as related to Liaño, a village currently situated on the outskirts of Santander;[2] members of the local hidalguia,[3] its representatives were later many times noted as civil and religious servants in the region.

[36] Owner of a number of mansions dubbed palacios, the key ones in Esles, Socabarga and Villaescusa,[37] Solana lived mostly in Santander, in the last decades of his life spending summers in his favorite estate, Granja Santa María in Vizcaínos de la Sierra, in the Burgos province.

[39] His biographer claims Solana led an austere life,[40] spending money on books, travelling and investments in his rural economy,[41] though in the 1920s he was noted as one of few cars owners in the Santander province.

[56] In 1909 he became concejal of the Villaescusa ayuntamiento[57] and in 1910 was elected alcalde of La Concha, noted for introducing fines for offences to religion and morality.

[76] When Primo de Rivera's coup brought political life to a standstill Solana withdrew into scientific work, in public restraining himself to Catholic activities.

Nominated caballero of the Malta Order,[77] in the mid-1920s he contributed to Asamblea Eucarística in Burgos,[78] by the end of the decade engaging in Acción Católica.

[94] In three letters he addressed the succession issue, responding to Alfonso Carlos’ attempt to sort out the question of what happens after his death; Solana's opinion was that the claimant was not free to appoint his successor and that an assembly of representatives had to participate in the process, the advice which might have heavily contributed to the regentialist solution eventually adopted.

[95] In terms of present-day politics Solana was among key advocates of close monarchist collaboration within Acción Española;[96] his study on right to resistance, often referred as pre-configuration of the 1936 coup, was published in the AE review.

[101] Some scholars suspect he was instrumental in drafting the 1939 memorandum to Franco, which demanded restoration of Traditionalist monarchy;[102] in the early 1940s he was fined as engaged in technically illegal Comunión structures.

[103] Solana is hardly mentioned as busy in day-to-day party activity in the 1940s, though some scholars claim that as theorist he was absolutely vital for maintaining Carlist spiritual identity as opposed to the Francoist amalgamation, including drafting another memorandum, dated 1945.

[110] The question underlying most of his efforts is about existence of filosofía española, a category bearing features specific to the Spanish realm.

[121] Solana approached the Golden Age heritage very much in the menendezpelayista manner,[122] as multifold manifestations of orthodoxy confronting heterodoxy up to the 19th century, embodied last in works of Luis de Lossada, Jaime Balmes and Ceferino González.

On the opposite end were the Liberal thinkers, even the iconic ones, and his references to Unamuno or Ortega y Gasset are extremely rare;[127] similarly he displayed scarce interest in foreign philosophers.

[139] His sole major work which falls neither to history of philosophy nor to theology is an unpublished mid-size study La libertad del hombre (1947),[140] discussing conditions, attributes, types and objectives of human freedom to act; set in the Catholic orthodoxy, it opposed the Liberal concept of liberty and claimed that "la facultad de elegir entre el bien y el mal moral, de obrar rectamente o de pecar, es un absurdo verdadero e inaceptable'.

[146] The third one is "descentralización y autarquía",[147] i.e. far-reaching self-government[148] of "intra-sovereign entities",[149] communities organized on geographical,[150] professional, functional or any other basis.

[151] Solana's own contribution is described as picking Traditionalist doctrine up where de Mella left off and developing it to confront totalitarian theories emerging in the 1920s and 1930s.

He went to great lengths denouncing Soviet, Fascist and Nazi regimes,[155] claiming that the tyranny and deification of state which they introduce, combined with excessive nationalism, render them "irreconcilable Traditionalist enemies".

[163] Some of his writings contain highly exalted passages on exceptional role of the Spaniards, comments resemblant of typical nationalist discourse and quite atypical for Traditionalism.

[164] Finally, as member of the movement which prided itself on belligerent past Solana was unusually bold in condemnation of "espiritú de violencia"; though he applied it mostly to foreign ideas,[165] he was also careful to note that notorious "Traditionalist intransigency" had its limits.

His legacy consists of one major work, El Tradicionalismo político español y la ciencia hispana, written in 1937-1938 and published in 1951;[168] it contains his vision of Traditionalist regime discussed against the Spanish theoretical background.

None of them is of general importance; his historiographic works which stand out are two mid-size biographical studies[174] and two heraldic dissertations,[175] followed by a number of smaller essays.

[177] A separate section of his heritage are small and mid-size works related to Marcelino Menendez Pelayo,[178] the scholar Solana considered his master.

[189] Though not particularly active beyond his native Cantabria, at times Solana was recorded as delivering lectures – usually related to 16th-century Spanish philosophy – to scholarly and semi-scholarly audiences elsewhere.

[191] In the 1920s he entered the Malta Order,[192] contributed to various religious assemblies,[193] excelled in ACNDP[194] and Acción Católica;[195] in the 1930s he was considered prospective member of Academia Pontífica de Ciencias.

Solana's theory of state went into almost total oblivion;[214] even within the Traditionalist and Carlist realm it is entirely overshadowed by later works of Elías de Tejada and Gambra.

[216] Beyond specialists in Golden Age philosophers or in Traditionalism, in historiography and political science Solana is known mostly in relation to his 1933 article,[217] discussing views of the Siglo de Oro theorists on tyrannical rule.