House of Luzárraga
[1] The Luzárraga family, originating from the Basque regions of Spain,[2] first appears in the history of Spanish nobility when they obtained the Sello Mayor de Hidalguía in the lordships of Vizcaya and Bilbao on November 23, 1650, as a reward for their military services to Spain, although the promotion of the family would only come in 1839, by the financial support given to the crown by Queen Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies during her exile in Paris, and when the monarchy returned to the Spanish throne, her daughter, Isabel II, confirmed it by Royal Decree on January 20, 1873.
The House of Luzarraga was created by royal decree of Isabel II on January 20, 1873, and put into effect on June 30, 1876, with the Guayaquilian Francisco Gabriel de Luzárraga y Rico, son of General Manuel Antonio de Luzárraga and Francisca Rico y Rocafuerte, niece of Vicente Rocafuerte, who was president of Ecuador between 1835 and 1839.
Iturriza mentions a friar, who among others in a shift of movement among churches, came to a parish in a place in the Basque region that he calls Luzarraga, although it lacks the accent possessed by the noble family.
[5] While the House of Luzárraga originally lived in the regions of Pais Vasco and Navarre,[2] the modern French branch consists of the descendants of Manuel Antonio de Luzárraga y Echezuria and Francisca Rico y Rocafuerte, who like many aristocratic families of Ecuador, undertook repeated trips to France and two of their children ended up settling in Paris, acquiring large properties, where they resided while they were educated.
After she married, she returned with her husband Juan Luis Thomassa to France and like her brother Francisco Gabriel, Adela entered the Parisian nobility.
In his writing, Voyages dans les Ameriques, French captain Gabriel-Pierre Lafond recalls Manuel Luzárraga being among the men he encountered when he landed in Guayaquil in 1828.
[4] Before the family began operating their own financial establishments, Manuel had already been long involved with the production of currency, as well as debt collection, in the country.
In July 1822, Luzárraga's representatives requested that a debt by General Francisco de Paula Santander, who would later become the president of Colombia, be repaid in the form of "a colonel's sword, steel scabbard, a pair of epaulettes and braid for a dolman.
[16] At the beginning of 1859, the House of Luzárraga had already amassed large fortunes, thanks in part due to the lucrative cocoa industry in the equatorial regions of South America at the time.
[19] While it is unclear how long the bills were in circulation, there was a dispute in the 1860s about the banknotes that General Guillermo Franco authorized, but the Jefe Superior rejected as legal tender.
[20] On banknotes printed in London in 1863 by the Bank of Luzarraga, portraits of Manuel Antonio de Luzárraga and his wife Francisca Rico Rocafuerte are present.
In an 1891 deed of transaction of the sons of Manuel Luzárraga, it is mentioned that a single strip of their hacienda (named Guaquilla), located in Babahoyo, contained over 1,600 cocoa trees.
Declared cultural heritage, this building was a site that held the interview between the generals Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín that occurred on July 26, 1822 (also known as the Guayaquil Conference), when the house was a family home, owned by the Manuel Antonio.
[24] In 1852, Manuel Antonio de Luzárraga returned to Bilbao to visit his parents, taking with him large amounts of cocoa as a reconciliation gift.
In 1828, Manuel built from his own money the first school for girls in Ecuador that years later, in the time of Gabriel Garcia Moreno, was given to the French mothers of the Order of the Sacred Hearts.
[28] General Luzárraga was turned into a minor character in the 1879 historical fiction novel The Secret of the Andes: A Romance by American author Friedrich Hassaurek.
[33][25] According to Italian historican and geographer, Francesco Marmocchi[it], Manuel, along with Loro, were in part responsible for creating the movement to begin the Ecuadorian War of Independence.
[38] As noted in a letter addressed to the Spanish Congress of Deputies in 1910, during a protest regarding a Supreme Court ruling on electoral law, Plácido Luzarraga, a government inspector and colleague of fellow involved politician Juan Tomás Gandarias, was beaten up by protestors and rescued by the Civil Guard after being gravely injured.
