This bronze bust is at the entrance of the Casino de Luarca building.
The plaque out:
"La villa de Navia
a su benefactor
Notario Rafael F. Calzada
1821-1910"
"Fernández Calzada, Rafael . Navia (Asturias), 23.I.1854 - Villa Calzada, Buenos Aires (Argentina), 4.XI.1929. Parliamentary deputy, lawyer, politician, writer.
He was the eldest of the six children of the marriage formed by Rafael Fernández Calzada, an illustrious notary and republican champion, and Rosa Fernández Luengas.
After primary education, he began high school, in the academic year 1867-1868, in Tapia de Casariego. In 1869, as a fifteen-year-old youth, he participated in several republican rallies, an ideology that he defended for the rest of his life. A year later, he moved to Madrid to study law .
His vocation as a playwright was reflected in four written works, of which two came to be represented in different theaters. He also collaborated in the newspaper La Unión Escolar , and founded an antimonarchical weekly, El Rey H , which was short-lived. In addition to studying, writing comedies and being a journalist, he worked in the firm of Francisco Pi y Margall, a great friend of his father.
During the Republic, in 1873, he was editor of the republican newspaper La Democracia . Two years later, in July 1875, he graduated in Law in Oviedo, but prevented by age from practicing as a lawyer or opposing state bodies, he decided to try his luck in America.
In September of the same 1875, he embarked in La Coruña bound for Argentina. A stay designed for one year lasted for more than half a century.
He began his work in Buenos Aires as an intern at the law firm of the famous Argentine lawyer José María Moreno. Continuing his journalistic vocation, he collaborated in El Correo Español, La Joven América and El Diario Español and wrote a comedy, Don Tiburcio, performed with great success.
He opened his own law firm in 1877 and began to build a reputed fame as one of the best Buenos Aires lawyers. His position as director of La Revista de Legislación y Jurisprudencia and the founding of the Revista de los Tribunals also contributed to this.
In 1880 he made a first trip to Spain, for family reasons; During almost a year that he remained in the country, he took the opportunity to strengthen ties with the republican leaders. Three years later, he traveled to London on a financial mission.
His work within the Spanish entities in Argentina was incessant. President of the Spanish Club from 1886, lawyer of the Spanish Charity Society, member of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, member of the Confederation of Spanish Mutual Aid Societies that brought together one hundred and forty-nine societies, and director of the Patriotic Association Spanish. He drew up the statutes of all the companies mentioned.
To prevent the disappearance of El Correo Español, an emblematic publication of the large Spanish colony, in 1890 he bought the newspaper, of which he became director, and later founded a public limited company, of which he was appointed president.
In addition to his work at the firm, he became a successful businessman, buying and selling large lots of land. He had a worse fortune in finances, as he founded the National Real Estate Bank, which soon went bankrupt. However, throughout his life, he amassed a considerable fortune.
In December 1891, he married Celina González, daughter of the President of Paraguay. Around that time, he received numerous offers from conspicuous Argentine politicians to acquire citizenship in his adopted country, as they guaranteed him a successful political career in Argentina. However, he always rejected the invitations, as he was not willing to renounce the Spanish citizenship that he retained until the end of his days.
In 1900 he traveled to Spain as a delegate to the Spanish- American Social and Economic Congress organized in Madrid by the Ibero-American Union led by Faustino Rodríguez de San Pedro, of which he was named honorary president. Requested by numerous entities, he toured the Peninsula and delivered speeches in various cities.
The banquet offered in his honor by the cloister of the University of Oviedo was especially moving. Taking advantage of his stay in Spain, he gathered in a luxurious album autographs - accompanied by poetry, thoughts, drawings and musical notes - of the most important characters in the political, social and cultural life of the time. For several months he traveled through countries on the shores of the Mediterranean, gathering materials for a book that he never published. In 1902 he was designated Navia's favorite son. After two years of stay in Spain, he returned to Buenos Aires.
In the Argentine capital, he organized, in 1903, the Spanish Republican League, of which he was appointed president, and was the promoter of the Spanish Republican Federation of America, with delegations in many countries, of which he was also president.
Another facet of Calzada was, apart from its generosity towards Spanish emigrants disadvantaged by fortune, its contribution to the development of Spanish entities. In Rosario de Santa Fe, he donated the land to build the Spanish Hospital, and in the province of San Luis he founded the Colonia Calzada.
Nor did he forget his family and intervened decisively so that his younger brothers, Fermín and César, settled in Buenos Aires, where they both achieved great renown as lawyers.
In the general elections of April 1907, the republicans of Madrid presented him in their candidacy and he was elected deputy. In November he traveled to Madrid to take possession of his certificate. When he arrived in the capital of Spain, a demonstration of ten thousand people was waiting for him at the station to welcome him. In Congress he demonstrated his oratorical skills and extensive knowledge. But disappointed by the internal struggles between the Republican leaders, in August 1908 he returned to Buenos Aires.
In 1909 he founded , twenty kilometers from Buenos Aires, Villa Calzada, a new town linked to the capital by a railway, where he built a hotel where he moved to live two years later, and which was his residence for the rest of his life. . For health reasons, in 1920 he visited Spain for a short period of time and declined proposals to participate in political life. In 1924 he began the task of compiling his many articles scattered throughout magazines and newspapers, as well as pamphlets and brochures, but only managed to publish the first five volumes.
He was a corresponding academic at the Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation, as well as an honorary member of the Geographical Society and the Society of Writers and Artists, all three in Madrid."
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