Isidoro Araujo de Lira

Don Isidoro Araujo de Lira was a Spanish journalist, writer and businessman who emigrated to the colony of Spanish Cuba and created the newspaper Diario de la Marina, what would become the longest-running newspaper in Cuba until its dissolution in 1960.

His grandsons include the journalist Isidoro Bugallal and the conservative politician Gabino Bugallal, President of the Spanish Council of Ministers briefly during the Restoration period.

Early life

Isidoro Araujo de Lira was born at 10 p.m. in the Galician town of Bouzas on January 2, 1816. 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."

In 1828, at the age of 12, his parents sent him to study the Humanities in Tuy, and later sent him to study philosophy at the Benedictine monastery in Samos, until his dispossession and the initial disentailments of the Isabelline period and the closure of smaller convents.

About this time, Araujo enlisted in the Havana defense battalions of General Roncali and General Concha in order to defend Spain from another uprising.