José de Salamanca y Mayol, 1st Marquis of Salamanca and Grandee of Spain (23 May 1811 – 21 January 1883) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and businessman. He served as Finance Minister of Spain and briefly as de facto prime minister in 1847.
Prominent during the reign of Isabella II, he was responsible for an extension to the city of Madrid; the Salamanca neighborhood of that city now bears his name. He had an adventurous life with many ups and downs. At one time he probably had the largest fortune in Spain. His prominent associates included Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, queen mother and regent for the young Queen Isabella. As a businessman, he undertook many projects that shaped modern Spain: railways, construction of entire neighborhoods, banking and investments; at the same time, he was associated with no small amount of political and corporate corruption.
Youth, student and mayor
Salamanca studied philosophy and law at the Colegio de San Bartolomé y Santiago in Granada, finishing his studies in 1828. It was probably in Granada that he first met groups opposed to the absolutist regime of Ferdinand VII, including Mariana Pineda, who became a martyr for the Spanish liberals when she was tried and condemned to death in 1831.
Shortly after his return to his native Málaga, the liberal general José María Torrijos was detained for an attempted coup. Salamanca was probably involved in the coup; he went to Madrid in an unsuccessful attempt to seek a royal pardon for Torrijos. His revolutionary ardor was calmed for a time and, thanks to his father's friendship with Francisco Cea Bermúdez, the President of the Council of Ministers (effectively, prime minister), he was made mayor of Monòver, (province of Alicante) in 1833.
That year Ferdinand VII died, bringing to power his wife, Maria Christina, as regent for the three-year-old queen Isabella II. The revolutionary movements of the regency era first propelled the future marquess onto the national scene. In 1835 he was named mayor of Vera (province of Almería); while there he married Petronila Livermore y Salas. After serving as mayor of Vera, he was chosen to represent the province of Almería in the Revolutionary Government at Seville.
In 1837 the Mutiny of La Granja de San Ildefonso forced Maria Christina to restore the liberal Constitution of 1812, which was elaborated into the new Progressive Constitution of 1837. Salamanca was elected deputy for Málaga in the new Cortes, which brought him to the capital, Madrid to serve in this office.
Deputy, minister, and exile
Once in Madrid, Salamanca developed a great inclination toward business, which would bring him both great successes and great difficulties. After serving briefly as a judge in a Madrid court of first instance, in 1839 he obtained the official monopoly on salt, and began also to invest in the Bolsa de Madrid (Madrid Stock Exchange). He became a prominent figure in the highest circles of Madrid society. Among his associates over the next few years were Nazario Carriquiri, Alejandro Aguado, Gaspar Remisa, José Buschenthal, Agustín Muñoz and the Rothschilds' agents in Madrid, Daniel Weisweiller and Ignacio Bauer. His possession of the salt monopoly, however, gained him the enmity, for the time, of General Ramón María Narváez.
As well as achieving such prominence (if not always honor and success) in business, his political star was also on the rise. On 28 March 1847 he was named Finance Minister of Spain in the government of Joaquín Francisco Pacheco; when the government fell in October of that year, he was briefly the de facto president of the Council of Ministers (that is, effectively, de facto prime minister), but was displaced by Florencio García Goyena, as parliament began investigating the alleged financial irregularities of his ministry.
Salamanca had been saved from his own disastrous stock speculations when Francisco Serrano Domínguez convinced Isabella II to make him Minister of Finance. Queen Isabella soon sacked the entire council of ministers, establishing a new government under General Narváez, the third time in four years that Narváez had been president of the Council of Ministers. As Salamanca's favors to his friends became public knowledge, he consorted with various generals who were plotting to overthrow the government. Narváez's solidification of power sent Salamanca into exile in France, where he remained until 1849.
Five years later, he was in exile again, characterized as a bestia negra ("black beast") by the new Progressive government that swept to power in June and July 1854 on the wings of unrest, ending the década moderada and beginning the bienio progresista.