Ricardo antonio salazar biography

When Ricardo Salazar Guardia was born on 22 September 1853, in San José, San José, Costa Rica, his father, Jesús Salazar Aguado, was 26 and his mother, Adela Petronila Guardia Bonilla, was 18. He married Julia Rafaela Loría Iglesias on 20 April 1879, in Alajuela, Alajuela, Costa Rica. They were the parents of at least 2 sons and 5 daughters. He lived in Stockwell, Surrey, England, United Kingdom in 1871. He died on 4 September 1916, in San José, Costa Rica, at the age of 62.

When Amalia began her intensive tour of Dao’s producers in the late noughties, the region was still reeling from Antonio Salazar’s regime. Despite stirring protests, the dictator seemed serene in his conviction that he was guiding Portugal’s destiny.

He preached rigor and patience and quoted Machiavelli frequently. He also strove for a solitary life, shunning close relationships and dismissing ministers with the clap of his hands.

Historical Background

Salazar was born in Vimieiro, a village near Santa Comba Dao, in the province of Beira Alta. His family was poor, but he received a good education, studying at the seminary in Viseu and then at the University of Coimbra, where he studied law. In the early stages of the First Republic, he remained deeply religious and was frustrated with the secularism and anti-Catholicism that ran rampant in Portugal.

A few years after the army overthrew parliamentary democracy, he was appointed finance minister and built a civilian authoritarian regime. He modeled his political system on Italian fascism, which he called corporativism, although he did not embrace the ideology of Mussolini. Instead, Salazar drew on the encyclicals of Pius XI and Leo XIII that preached that governments should assume only those responsibilities that neither market nor family could do adequately on their own.

Gallagher: Salazar’s conservative political ideas, combined with his firm grasp of economic matters, kept him in power until his death in 1970. He was a strong defender of Portugal’s grip on its colonial empire, which he referred to as “Lusotropicalism,” and defied African liberation movements and U.S.-led diplomatic pressure to give up its colonies. He was also brusque in dealing with subordinates, once ordering a minister who arrived hatless at a conversation to clamp his own homburg on the man’s head because he looked “better that way.”

His loyalty to Great Britain

Jose Maria do Espirito Santo e Silva, born in Lisbon on May 13, 1850, didn't know who his father was. His baptismal certificate recorded his paternity as "unknown."

But his own children and children's children have been keenly aware of their parentage. Jose founded Portugal's most powerful banking dynasty, and started one of Europe's great family fortunes. His heirs would come to control companies with investments in real estate, agriculture and industry as well as finance, on several continents.

Jose began with a modest "caza de cambio" on a small street in Lisbon, exchanging foreign currencies and selling lottery tickets, retail bonds and other financial instruments. By the time he died in 1915, he owned a good deal of real estate in Lisbon as well as companies invested in sugar production in Mozambique, cotton in Angola, and - central to his growing empire - a bank, which in 1920 was renamed Banco Espirito Santo.

Masters of networking

After he died in 1915, Jose's business empire was directed by his sons, first Ricardo and later Manuel. The sons were gifted networkers, and the family became intimate with scions of other family dynasties, including the Firestones and Rockefellers, as well as aristocrats and royals.

During World War Two, they befriended and hosted the Duke of Windsor and the man who would later become Spain's King Juan Carlos, among many other notables. Ties to the financial and political elite proved valuable as history served up cross-currents.

The family had a long golden stretch. Ricardo Espirito Santo, the founder's elder son, who assumed the chairmanship of the family business after the founder died, proved an able businessman, as did Manuel Ribeiro Espirito Santo, another son of the founder, who took over when Ricardo died of a heart attack in 1955.

Manuel governed Grupo Espirito Santo's fortunes until his death in 1973. Three cousins then fought over the succession; Manuel's son Manu