Miguel Biada

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Miguel Biada y Buñol , in Catalan Miquel Biada i Bunyol , maiden name Miguel Viada , (born November 24, 1789 in Mataró ; † April 2, 1848 ibid) was a Spanish entrepreneur .

Life

Biada, son of the builder Juan Bautista Viada and his wife Teresa Bunyol, was the youngest of 13 siblings. He attended the Escuela Pía de Santa Ana in Mataró and in 1806 the helmsman school in Arenys de Mar .

When Mataró was destroyed by French troops during the Napoleonic War in the spring of 1808, Biada traveled to Maracaibo , where one of his brothers was already living. There he was active in trade between the coastal cities and the Antilles . Soon he was drawn into the beginning Venezuelan War of Independence and carried out various missions to defend the Spanish cities of Coro and Maracaibo.

In 1815 Biada returned to Mataró and married Teresa Prats Vilaseca, who gave birth to their first son Miquel the next year. When the war in Venezuela seemed to be over, Biada returned to Maracaibo in 1818. However, that was armistice of Trujillo broken Biada 1820 and 1821 by rebels arrested and exiled.

Biada returned penniless to Mataró, where his second son Salvador was born in 1823. Shortly afterwards he traveled (with the family name Biada instead of the previous Viada) to Havana , which had become the central trading center for the movement of goods from the ex-colonies to Spain. Together with his nephew Onofre Viada Balanzó, he built up a new fortune with the export of cigars and the import of foodstuffs and manufactured goods as well as with exchange shops. In 1825 his third son Juan was born in Havana. In 1833 cholera spread in Havana, from which Biada also fell ill, but survived, while his wife and two young children Casimir and Cristina (four and two years old) died.

Since 1830 the businessmen of Havana tried to build a railway line from Havana to Güines to facilitate the transport of sugar . In 1833 Biada took part in the project, which could be realized with a loan from an English bank. In 1837 the railway line to Bejucal and in 1839 to Güines was put into operation.

Biada always supported the liberal cause in Spain so he carried out a collection to fund Queen Isabella's troops in the First Carlist War . In 1838 he was made Knight of the Orden de Isabel la Católica for his support of the Spanish troops in the Venezuelan War of Independence . In the political struggle of the Capitán General de Cuba Miguel Tacón y Rosique (1834-1838) against the mayor Claudio Martínez de Pinillos, Biada was part of the Tacón contingent, who made Biada in 1837 Capitán of the Voluntary Association of Business People in Havana.

Directors of the Barcelona-Mataró Railway in 1861 in celebration of the merger with the Granollers line

After the end of the First Carlist War, Biada returned to Barcelona in 1840 . His search for partners for the construction of a railway line from Barcelona to his hometown Mataró turned out to be difficult because the prospects of rail transport were not yet seen. It was not until 1843 that Biada succeeded in forming a group of investors, which, under the leadership of Josep Maria Roca, obtained approval from the Spanish government in London. The company Camino de Hierro de Barcelona a Mataró was founded in 1845 to build the Barcelona – Mataró railway line with Biada as chief financial officer. This became the first railway in Spain to go into service on October 28, 1848. Thanks to Biada's careful financial management, the company was not endangered by the financial crisis of 1846–1848.

literature

  • Manuel Cusach's Corredor: Miquel Biada i Bunyol (1789–1889) L'home, l'indià i el promotor del tren de Barcelona a Mataró . Mataró 2007.
  • De Mataró a Amèrica (accessed February 13, 2016).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Artículo conmemorativo del 50 aniversario de la Inauguración del ferrocarril Mataró . La Vanguardia (Barcelona) , November 2, 1898 (accessed February 13, 2016).
  2. ↑ Notas locales . La Vanguardia (Barcelona), September 21, 1911 (accessed February 13, 2016).
  3. ↑ Barcelona Isabelina . La Vanguardia (Barcelona) , February 16, 1926 (accessed February 13, 2016).
  4. ↑ Cecilia Vallés (Barcelona), Cristina Pérez (La Habana): La experiencia de Miguel Biada en dos ferrocarriles pioneros: La Habana-Güines y Barcelona-Mataró (accessed on February 13, 2016).
personal data
SURNAME Biada, Miguel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Biada y Buñol, Miguel (full name); Biada i Bunyol, Miquel; Viada, Miguel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1789
PLACE OF BIRTH Mataró
DATE OF DEATH April 2, 1848
Place of death Mataró