Acting career
After debuting as a stage actor in 1989 and making a number of television appearances, he landed his feature film debut in the drama Everything in Place, released in 2002.
In addition to screen performances, he also worked as a dubbing actor in Dragon Ball, providing the voices for characters such as Tao Pai Pai, Mr. Popo, Android 17, and Beerus.
He appeared as the subordinate of the cruel Captain Vidal in Pan's Labyrinth (2006).
In 2011, he appeared in 17 Hours, a film about the 1981 coup attempt in Spain, portraying Fernando Castedo the then director of Radiotelevisión Española.
Under the direction of fellow Andalusian Alberto Rodríguez, he appeared in supporting roles as a director of a youth detention center in 7 Virgins (2005), as a journalist for El Caso during the Transition in the thriller film Marshland (2014) and as inquisitor general Celso de Guevara in the 16th century-set series The Plague.
In the legal drama B (2015), Solo portrayed Pablo Ruz, the judge of Spain's Audiencia Nacional who presided over the Gürtel case and the Bárcenas case, opposite to Pedro Casablanc (Luis Bárcenas).
His only Goya Award came for his supporting performance as El Triana, a small-time dealer, in The Fury of a Patient Man (2016). He employed a dysphonic voice he improvised during one of the first readings of his lines that the director Raúl Arévalo liked so much that he was asked to keep it.
Solo featured in the play Smoking Room, a stage adaptation of the 2002 film by Roger Gual and Julio D. Wallovits. It debuted at the Teatro Pavón Kamikaze on 12 October 2017 and won Solo the Actors and Actresses Union Award for Best Theatre Actor in a Secondary Role. Solo's career onstage continued with his participation in Mrs. Dalloway, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, portraying Peter. It debuted at the Teatro Español on 28 March 2019.
For his role in the comedy film The Good Boss (2021) as Miralles, the right hand of businessman Julio Blanco (played by Javier Bardem) and working as a sort of conscience for the latter, he landed another nomination for the Goya Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Víctor Erice's Close Your Eyes (2023) earned him recognition as a leading actor. His role was that of film director Miguel Garay (described as an "obvious Erice stand-in"), so shaken by the missing of a friend that he quit filmmaking. Critic Glenn Kenny observed that, in the film, his "deep-set eyes convey universes of worry and sadness". The performance landed him his first nomination for the Goya Award for Best Actor.
In 2025, he collaborated again with Alberto Rodríguez in the miniseries The Anatomy of a Moment (another exploration of the February 1981 coup attempt), portraying General Gutiérrez Mellado. According to Solo, the greatest challenge he faced in order to play the role was understanding Gutiérrez Mellado's complex evolution "from being someone who helped carry out the coup d'état in '36 to becoming someone who tries to stop another coup 40 or 50 years later".
He starred in the drama film Face to Face (2025) opposite Sonia Almarcha as an embittered online hater who meets in person the celebrity television host he abuses online. He describe his character as "a person who deeply despises himself and is in a process of regression".
Solo died in Madrid on 30 July 2026, at the age of 62, after a prolonged illness caused by cancer. He was shooting Las vecinas. His wake was held at the funeral home of San Isidro in Madrid and was attended by colleagues such as Raúl Arévalo, Melina Matthews, Malena Alterio, Álex de la Iglesia, and Carolina Bang.
