I am José Colomina, Indiano and industrial, Uncle of Luis Colomina and grandfather to José Luis Colomina.

I was born in Ulldecona, near Tortosa, 85 years ago. At just 15 I went to Cuba with my older brother, Fernando, to “make the Americas”. The black slave trade was profitable and could buy sugar mills and rural properties in Havana. I returned to Spain in the 50s, after the rise to power of General Narvaez, Duke of Valencia. I decided to settle in this city because the times of progress have arrived and it is close to my hometown. The capital that I accumulated in Cuba I invested in a textile and a silk fan factories, both driven by modern steam engine. In the 70´s, before the crisis of the Valencian silk, I had to close the textile factory, but with accrued benefits and capital that my brother sent from Cuba, where he was already Count and Senator, I could expand the fans factory and assemble companies in the same industry. Shortly after I decided to pass on the business to my son Luís, who lived with me in Valencia, and I started to crush the ideas of anarchy and disorder that prevailed since the Revolution of 1868. With the Marquis de Campo, Cirilo Amorós and many other notables, in 1874 I urged the pronouncement of Sagunto General Martinez Campos and the Restoration of the Bourbon dynasty. But over time his ministers have been influenced by liberal ideas, have abolished slavery and have stopped losing our colonial pearls: Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. We live in times of crisis.