José Vidal Ribas

José Vidal y Ribas (1814–1870) was a Spanish businessman, druggist, and slave owner who made a fortune thanks to the African slave trade business in North America and Cuba, so much so that in 1868, he became the ninth largest taxpayer in Barcelona.

Early and personal life José Vidal y Ribas in 1814 in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, as the son of Francisca Ribas and José Vidal Mayol (1782–1817), a descendant of a family of merchants and businessmen of the Catalan bourgeoisie.

Business career Slave trade Vidal Ribas started his business career as a botiguer ("shop owner"), but in 1843, the 29-year-old Vidal-Ribas and his father-in-law opened the company Vidal, Mustich & Co., a firm that provided cover for a factory in the Benin town of Ouidah in Africa, which ended up being used to house slaves, who remained there for days before embarking. which unleashed a controversy in Spain that reached the main newspapers and Congress, and that led to a treaty with the United Kingdom that allowed them to stop the ships of slave traders, thus hindering the human traffic between Catalonia and the coasts of Africa; this was a great diplomatic clash at the time.

Real estate and infrastructure Vidal Ribas also had a strong desire to get involved in the change and remodeling of territory, both urban and rural, thus actively participating in municipal urban planning decisions and investing in constructions in the Eixample and other neighbourhoods of Barcelona. Between 1863 and 1867, the company Fomento del Ensanche of the José Vidal-Ribas family was noted as "the largest developer of the Ensanche with 26 buildings, and the family even owned the land where the Columbus Monument was cast in 1887.

In 2020, over 150 years after his death, two streets still bear his name: One in his hometown of Sant Feliu and the other in the neighbouring town of Esplugues de Llobregat. In the early 2020s, however, both municipalities decided to erase the slave imprint from their streets, with Esplugues renaming it as Carrer Hipàtia d'Alexandria in 2023, while Sant Feliu did it in March 2025, when Ateneu SantFeliuenc started a campaign to rename it Carrer de l'Ateneu, an initiative that required a certain 100 signatures from its residents.