A level of his client was almost the main accusation against the slave passing of one of the most distressed emperors of the history of Spain, Antonio López. “Do you want to know the trade that the insignia D. Antonio López hacía? Traficaba en humne humana […] López agreed with the black captains, and the law of the bucks, to buy all the cargo or part of it “, written in 1884 Francisco Bru, Herman de Luisa Bru. The work of the first brands of Comillas also has been shown to be a part of the treatment of human beings. It was the first of 238 members of a demonstration that in 1873 took place from Barcelona to the Council of Ministers that abolished the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico. Su marido is enriched with this negotiation during its stage in Cuba. ‘N Libro supports documents that are certified.
Martín Rodrigo is the author of A man and my business. The controversial history of Antonio López, marks of Comillas (Ariel). Rodrigo is Professor of Contemporary History of the Pompe Fabra University and an expert on the negroes of great Catalan fortunes. In 2017, another opening work was published, Negroes and slaves. Barcelona and the Atlantic slavery (Icaria). The weight of the Catalan algae and its Indians in the trade of enslaved slaves in Africa was enormous. The historian Josep Maria Fradera calculates that the Catalan capital establishes 74% of the Africans transferred to Cuba between 1817 and 1821, when Spain began to apply the agreements with the British Empire to abolish the treatment of Africans, even if it was not systematic. Off Negroes and slaves is accounted for by at least 150 captains and radical companies in Catalonia who participate in this negotiation. One of them was the Comillas brands.
Antonio López y López (Comillas, 1817 – Barcelona, 1883) laat vaar – España para hacer las Américas cuando en 1846 fue llamado a filas en la segunda guerra carlista. In Cuba, an alchemist took part in a series of sugars, the empress Andrés Bru. In 1853 he returned to Spain and established his residence in Barcelona, where he lived with his family. López mantuvo los lazos con Cantabria, pero su conglomerado naviero, financiero e industrial tuvo come sede la capital catalana. A man and my business is an exhaustive analysis of López’s action as an empress and allies that he sells to other Indian detachments, some of them, slave reconciliators.
Rodrigo adds to the PAIS extreme figures: “In all its history, the United States has collected 380,000 slaves from Africa. Cuba received 900,000 slaves. Of these, 600,000 were transported to Cuba illegally from 1821 ”. The last African slave that was disembarked in Cuba – and in all of America – was born in 1867. Spain, Rodrigo recalls, was the last European country to abolish slavery — in 1886 — and it was delayed due to the movement of industrial and commercial pressure groups, the most active, the Catalan sector, captained by Antonio López.
Rodrigo welcomes the arguments of the defenders of the markets of Comillas during the controversy over the withdrawal of his statue in Barcelona in 2018. For this he wanted to update his previous work on the dynasty of López, published in 2000 , to amplify aspects about the trade with slaves that day has a lad. The defenders of public homage to the first brands of Comillas –Grand de España by the grace of Alfonso XII– arguían that the only one who has denounced the presumptive trayectoria as López’s negro was his wife, insisted on it by a hereditary conflict. Otra thesis exaggerated by the parties to maintain the statute is that in this era was in common with the transaction of slaves. Rodrigo’s book is not the only one that demonstrates that Antonio López and his husband Claudio lead one of the major companies dedicated to the law of bargaining for slaves and tribunals in Cuba, without any chance of getting caught with illegal traffic.
British Investigation
The British authorities alerted in 1850 to the Cuba of the Goleta Deseada, loaded with 280 Africans. The information from the British Consul in Santiago de Cuba, James Forbes, signed to Antonio López as one of the recipients of the slaves. To be a delicto, the military governor of Santiago tuvo that interrogated. His statement was included in Forbes’ London section. López assures us that he has nothing to do with that cargo, and that his company alone is dedicated to the trade of crippled slaves, that is to say, the islands of Cuba.
Another indication of the illegal trade of persons found by Rodrigo in the accounts of 1853 of the company Antonio López and Hermano, in which a loss was recorded for “expeditions” that could not be opened with the galley Eusebio of the Guard. Boats from this site are identified as a means of transporting slaves. The point is not clear what mercantile is called the “expedition”, but Rodrigo said that there were no people. “If you are engaging in illegal activity, you will not receive any written documents or you will be destroyed. Including se quemaban barcos ”, according to the author.
British diplomacy denounced the reiterated form that Spanish colonial authorities allowed in December of slavery. Vapor operator companies, such as López, take care of the new workers who are forced by the captains who are on cays to translate to gates. The accounting and notarial notices compiled by Rodrigo in the Cuba National Archive and in the Provincial Historical Archive of Santiago de Cuba indicate a slave frenzy for slaves on the part of López. Tan solo between the years 1848 and 1851 constan in the book more than 500 slaves required by them. Rodrigo subraits that the habitual system for legalizing the illegal slave slaves – those introduced illegally from Africa – was untenable as a pre-registration of the sale of a non-existent party of creole slaves, which the colonial officials did not control. “Only then can the company Antonio López and Hermano powder sell 47 slaves of a tacada”, Rodrigo explains, “all of the supuesta property of Juan de Mena Garibaldo, following the powders that this October 15, 1850” .
The example of the Goytisolo
While capital is accumulating in Cuba, López is increasing its speculative activity through the sale of plants and sugar plantations. Martin Rodrigo points out in the book that he valued these properties throughout the number of slaves registered with them. For example, the case of the Goytisolo family – anticipated by the Germans and writers José Agustín, Juan and Luis -, which includes a single plantation to maintain the mano of man who is involved in the operation. The terrains will be cultivated and the slaves will be transferred to other plantations. The heritage of these lines was recently redesigned in Spain. In the case of Antonio López, according to Rodrigo, the empire that lives in the metropolis is based solely on the benefits it obtains in its initiatives as negroes, but without these, it does not have many laws.