Samuel R. Quiñones

Samuel Ramón Quiñones Quiñones (October 29, 1903 – March 11, 1976), commonly known as Samuel R. Quiñones, was a prominent attorney in Puerto Rico who served as Speaker of the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico from 1941 to 1943 and for twenty years in the Senate of Puerto Rico as its fifth President, from 1949 to 1968, by far the longest serving Senate President. He is also the only person to hold both posts.

Biography Samuel Ramón Quiñones Quiñones was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico to his parents Don Francisco Quiñones and Doña Dolores Quiñones. Graduated from Central High School in Santurce. He studied law at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law.

During the 1930s and 1940s, he served on various organizations: President of Ateneo Puertorriqueño (1934–1937), President of Colegio de Abogados (1943–1945), President of House of Representatives in Puerto Rico (1941–1943), Vice President for the Senate of Puerto Rico (1945), and elected President of PPD (Partido Popular Democrático) in 1938. He had also served as Speaker of the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico in the early 1940s. During his terms in office as President of the Senate, he commissioned the famed Toro & Ferrer architectural firm to design the Senate Annex office building, which was inaugurated in 1955.

Between 1951 and 1952, he served as one of the most prominent members of the Constitutional Convention of Puerto Rico that drafted the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

A prolific poet and writer, he founded the literary magazine called Índice. In 1941 he published an essay book: Temas y letras.

Quiñones died in San Juan, Puerto Rico by his mouth cancer on March 11, 1976, at the age of 71. Was buried at Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in San Juan, Puerto Rico.