The man from Canet de Mar who knew how to find the most fertile sugar plantations in Cuba

As we have already seen throughout this series, the influence of Catalan entrepreneurs in the Americas—especially in the Antilles—during the 18th and 19th centuries was remarkable. Figures such as [names of figures] left their mark on those lands. Facundo Bacardí Massó, Josep Xifré Casas, Josep Ventosa Soler and Jaume Partagàs Ravell, some of whom built brands that still endure today. One of the most common places of origin for these entrepreneurs was the Maresme region, as is the case of Josep Baró Blanxart, who left his native Canet at a very young age to embark for Havana.

In his youth, working as a cabin boy on a ship, Baró embarked on the great adventure of crossing the Atlantic in search of fortune, a story with a successful ending. When he settled on the island of Cuba in 1815, he began working for others in the sugar industry, since this business was dominated by Catalans; hence the surnames of the owners of the main sugar mills. mills They were Marimon, Bosch, Rosell, Solé, Pla, and Raurell, among others. This experience allowed him to understand in detail how sugarcane farms operated. He understood it so well that he soon designed a technological innovation that made the farm machinery much more efficient. This invention was a great success and allowed him to begin building his future fortune. His first investments were in the area he already knew, sugarcane plantations, and little by little he accumulated mills until becoming one of the most important landowners on the island. He seems to have a special intuition for choosing the most fertile farms.

With his business established, he decided to diversify his investments and for this reason was one of the driving forces behind the first railway in the territory, which was also the first in all of Spain. He also chartered ships, given the great importance of maritime routes in the slave trade with Africa (it's important to remember that the plantations were very labor-intensive and a large part of the workforce were enslaved Africans). In the field of shipping, he was the first to establish a regular ferry service between Havana and the Iberian Peninsula.

To break into these new businesses—which also included banking and insurance—he partnered with Julián de Zulueta y Amondo, Marquis of Álava, who became one of the richest men in Spain and was married to the daughter of the Marquis of Marianao, Salvador de Samà. They were the majority shareholders of Alianza y Compañía, which in the 1860s was the main company dedicated to transporting Chinese laborers to Cuba. For a time, it was believed that Baró had amassed his fortune without relying on the slave trade, as a text from that era states: "José Baró Blanxart, a native of Catalonia, left twenty-three million pesos upon his death, without engaging in the slave trade." He also found time to enter politics, because in 1845 he was a councilman in the city of Matanzas, the area where he had most of his businesses. Interestingly—and this gives a clear idea of the influence of Catalans on the island—just two years later the mayor of Matanzas would be Josep Tomàs Ventosa from Villanueva, who also made his fortune in America.

Although Baró remained in the Antilles for the rest of his life, in 1875 he was granted the title of Viscount of Canet de Mar (not to be confused with the medieval title of the same name, which referred to Canet de Roussillon) and Marquis of Santa Rita. He was also a Commander of the Order of Charles III (1861), likely for his support of the militias that opposed Cuban independence. Incidentally, the tradition from previous centuries whereby slaves took the surname of their owner is the reason why the surname Barón is so common today in the city of Colón (Matanzas province).

Although our protagonist died on the other side of the Atlantic, some traces of his existence can be found in Canet de Mar: on the one hand, there is the sanctuary of the Virgin of Mercy, which he himself helped to finance, and, also in this town of Maresme, we can find a street that bears the names of those who seem to have been Indianos (Spaniards who made their fortunes in the Americas).