The Town Rebuilt by Two Confectioners

On Christmas Day, the earth shook. At 9 PM on December 25, 1884, an earthquake of over six on the Richter scale struck the provinces of Granada and Malaga. That tremor, followed by numerous aftershocks, caused about 1,200 deaths, many injuries, and countless material damages in more than a hundred towns. The Granada town of Arenas del Rey, the epicenter of the quake, was completely destroyed, as were Alhama, Zafarraya, Albuñuelas, and Periana.

It is estimated that around 40,000 people were left homeless, and many others left their homes due to the threat of collapse. The catastrophe not only arrived on the most family-oriented day of the year but also in the middle of winter: after the earthquake, it froze, snowed, and rained torrentially on the survivors, gathered in camps in the open or sheltered as best they could under makeshift huts. Without food, clothes, medicines, or help.

The first debris removal and care for the injured were carried out by the residents themselves, as aid did not arrive until a week later. Does this sound familiar to you? 140 years ago, those who undertook the rescue tasks were friends, family, and other volunteers who, personally or on behalf of a group, came to the disaster site to lend a hand. It seems unbelievable that so much time later, the same thing happened again with the floods in Valencia, but it did.

In 1884, the role of today's social networks was played by mule trips, the telegraph, and newspapers, and once the news spread throughout Spain, a wave of solidarity similar to now was unleashed. The institutional reaction was similar to the current one, slow and late, although even less effective as there were no emergency protocols or mechanisms to unlock economic aid at the time.

The situation was so similar to what those affected by the DANA suffer today that it is frightening, but if I am telling you this, it is not only because we are all affected by the consequences of the flood. It turns out that two of the people who mobilized the most for the Granada earthquake belonged to the world of gastronomy, and the testimony of their solidarity can still be seen, made of cement and bricks, in a town so grateful that it even changed its name in their honor.

Santa Cruz del Comercio is in the Alhama region (Granada). It is a small town of 530 inhabitants that until October 1888 was officially called Santa Cruz de Alhama and voluntarily renamed as a gesture of gratitude towards the Madrid merchants who funded its total reconstruction.

The Circle of the Mercantile and Industrial Union was founded in Madrid in 1858 as a club of entrepreneurs dedicated to promoting commercial activity and defending the interests of its members. Although it sounds like a capitalist conspiracy, the Circle also served as a relief society and charitable entity, raising money, for example, for the victims of the Murcia floods in 1879 or organizing philanthropic events of various kinds.

Its members responded immediately to the desperate call made by the director of El Defensor de Granada, Luis Seco de Lucena, the day after the earthquake in the pages of his newspaper. In the Circle of the Mercantile Union, there were bankers, entrepreneurs, and manufacturers of all kinds of products, but it so happened that in the board of directors, there were two confectioners. The president, the Teruel native Carlos Prast y Julián (1830-1904), owned the famous confectionery and grocery store Casa Prast in Madrid, supplier to the Royal House and birthplace of Ratón Pérez. Another man dedicated to sweets, the Lugo native Venancio Vázquez López (1847-1921), combined his work at the head of a factory and chocolate and biscuit shops with the position of accountant of the Circle.

Both were decisive in the fate of Santa Cruz de Alhama. Although it only had to mourn thirteen deaths, in this town, the ground literally opened: the vast majority of its 300 houses were ruined, and toxic gases and sulfurous waters began to emerge from the depths of the earth. It was the first municipality visited by the relief commission of the Circle of the Mercantile Union, urgently appointed on January 3, 1885, to distribute the money that members began to collect and the donations in kind delivered to the confectioneries.

The commission, led by Venancio Vázquez, arrived in Santa Cruz when neither guards nor soldiers had yet arrived there. They distributed warm clothing, food, medicines, and materials to build cabins. The residents named them adopted sons of the municipality at that very moment.

Back in Madrid, they continued with the collection and ended up raising 250,000 pesetas, which were almost entirely dedicated to building 224 houses, a bridge, a new church, and a town hall with a school in Santa Cruz. Next to that town hall, Carlos Prast Street still exists, a sweet reminder of what two confectioners with a will to help achieved.