In 1761, the forerunner of independence, José María España, was born.
Published at: 08/05/2024 08:34 AM
On May 8, 1799, José María España was executed in the Plaza Mayor of
Caracas, who together
with Manuel Gual led the important pre-independence
movement known as the Conspiracy of Gual and Spain.
He was born on February 28, 1761 in La
Guaira. Spain was a cultured man, he was a regular reader of
philosophy, he was fluent in English and French.
When his father died, he and his brothers started to run a cacao
farm called El Carmen, which the Spanish family owned near
Naiguatá. He also practiced commerce.
In 1793, the governor and captain general of Venezuela,
Pedro Carbonell, appointed him Lieutenant Chief Justice of Macuto.
Since the end of 1796, Juan Bautista Picornell, Manuel
Cortés Campomanes, Sebastián Andrés and José Lax
were in the vaults of La Guaira, who had been
sent to prison from the peninsula for having tried to establish a republic like the French republic there.
Gual, Spain and the group of
conspirators that followed them, contacted the prisoners, who
reaffirmed their revolutionary ideas.
Spain, in its position as lieutenant
justice, favored the escape of the Spanish revolutionaries, on the night
of June 4, 1797, hid them in Macuto and made it easier for them to
flee to the Antilles on the 26th.
Once the conspiracy was discovered by the Spanish
authorities in Caracas, on July 13 of that same year, Spain and Gual went
ahead with meetings at a place called Quita Calzón , upstream from La Guaira.
On July 14, authorities arrested many of those
involved. Gual and Spain escape to the
Antilles. Spain went to the island of Curaçao, from where it then passed to those
of Guadalupe, Saint Bartholomew, Saint Thomas,
Sainte Croix, Martinique and finally to the island of Trinidad.
In 1799 he returned to La Guaira, but his hiding place was exposed; after being tried,
he was sentenced to death as a seditionist and a conspirator.
Before his death, Spain uttered
the prophetic words: “It won't be long before my
ashes are honored.”
In that same place is the statue of the Liberator Simon Bolivar, so that his prophecy that his ashes would be honored was fulfilled.
Mazo News Team