Antonio María Andrés Mazarrasa Quintanilla (1864-1941) was a Spanish politician, civil servant and entrepreneur. Politically he initially supported the Carlists, then he joined the breakaway Mellistas, and eventually he engaged in Primoriverrista structures. In the 1890s he was a member of the Santander ayuntamiento. His parliamentarian career climaxed during two terms in the lower chamber of the Cortes (1903-1905 and 1910–1914) and one term in the senate (1919-1920). In 1924-1927 he served as civil governor of the Segovia province. In 1928-1936 and 1939-1940 he was the managing director of Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Madrid. Until the late 1920s he was engaged in a family-held Mazarrasa mining conglomerate in Cantabria.
Family and youth
The family of Mazarrasa for centuries has been representative for Cantabrian rural hidalguia with its members active in the bar, army and officialdom, though also in arts. The great-grandfather of Antonio, Juan Manuel Mazarrasa Mazarrasa (1746-1824), was the native of Villaverde de Pontones, a village in the Trasmiera county; he served as Abogado de los Reales Consejos. His younger son and the grandfather of Antonio, Felipé Mazarrasa Cobo de la Torre (1789-1879), inherited the grand family house in Villaverde and became one of the 50 largest rural taxpayers in the Santander province. His son and the father of Antonio, Juan Manuel Mazarrasa Jorganes (1827-1898), also from Villaverde, became a lawyer. He represented in court some major creditors of La Providencia and La Esperanza, Cantabrian mining companies extracting zinc and lead ores in Andara, in eastern parts of Picos de Europa; eventually in the 1880s he purchased the troubled companies on auction and re-oriented the family economy from agriculture and rental of rural properties to industry.
Mazarrasa Jorganes married Josefa Quintanilla López-Galmares (died 1906), daughter to an enriched indiano originated from the Salamanca province and his Mexican wife, both settled in Cantabria. The couple lived in the family residence in Villaverde de Pontones and had 10 children, born between the mid-1860s and the mid-1880s; Antonio was the oldest one. Though 3 younger sons became engineers, supposed to manage technicalities of the mining business, Antonio entered the faculty of law at Universidad Central in Madrid. In the early 1880s he was noted as an active student; following graduation in 1885 and his brief apprenticeship period later, in 1887 he entered Colegio de Abogados in Santander and opened his own law firm in the Cantabrian capital, soon to look after legal affairs of the Mazarrasa mining conglomerate.
Already in his late 30s, in 1902, Antonio Mazarrasa married María de la Concepción Fernández de Henestrosa Tacón (1878-1968); she was daughter to a retired Madrid military Francisco Javier Fernández de Henestrosa Santiestban, who claimed aristocratic titles of Marqués de Villadarias, Marqués de Vera, and some other. The couple settled in Santander and had 6 children, born between the early 1900s and the early 1910s. One son perished during infancy in 1917; two others were executed by the Republicans in 1936, one in Bilbao and one – who started to earn his name as an Atletico Madrid winger – in Paracuellos de Jarama. The oldest son Roberto Mazarrasa Fernández (1903-1981) became a career officer in the artillery corps. Among Antonio's grandchildren the best known one was a military historian, Javier Mazarrasa Coll; his brother Agustín went into the footsteps of his grandfather and in the late 20th century he held managerial roles in Caja de Ahorros y Monte Piedad de Madrid. The Catholic priest-singer Gonzalo Mazarrasa Martín and a writer Lucia Botín Mazarrasa are descendants of Mazarrasa's brother, while authors from the Mazarrasa Mowinckel family are descendants of his sister.
Early public career (until 1902)