[1] His father was José Araujo Troncoso y Lira, and his mother was Luisa Alcalde Mayor, both from what were called in that era "respectable families.

There is disagreement in the primary sources and the historical community regarding the date, but in either 1839 or 1844, Araujo became the founder, first director, and co-owner of Diario de la Marina, actively advocating for Spanish business interests in Cuba.

[4][1] His debut novel, Ana Mir, was a serialized novel published between 1840 and 1841 in the conservative newspaper El Noticioso y Lucero, where he also began contributing opinion articles under the pseudonym "Lira.

During one of these trips in 1854, he helped found the Diario Español in Madrid and published a pamphlet entitled "Import Duties on the Peninsula on Cuban and Puerto Rican Sugars," in 1855.

[4] On April 5, 1861, the Madrid newspaper El Contemporáneo published a lengthy letter from him, dated March 7 in Havana, addressing criticisms by Benjamín Fernández Vallín, El Contemporáneo's Havana correspondent, about his direction of the short-lived Correo de Cuba.