2-996-075 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Don José de Salamanca, 1860. A '...capitalist, one of the most eminent of railway-contractors...he became a member of the Spanish press, in connection with the Advisador Malagueno...[He then joined] the Cabinet of Queen Christina as Finance Minister, and the capacity which he brought to monetary affairs is thought by some to have imparted the first impulse to the astonishing resuscitation of Spain. In the present day, if there be any comprehensive enterprise in that country, its success is deemed certain so soon as Don José de Salamanca takes it under his patronage. Spain has been languishing for the new network which forms the means of communication in other countries, and it is Salamanca who is developing it...One small railway, realising a profit of not less than £5000 a month, is said to be entirely his own. He has undertaken to establish the Santander, Lisbon, and Oporto line, which not only connect Portugal and Spain, but affords to the interior of the latter direct access to the chief Iberian ports on the Atlantic. He has been mainly instrumental in the formation of the line from New York, now an outport of European trade, to the Missouri by the Grand Trunk, of which the Atlantic and Great Western is the middle and completing portion'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.