ORIGIN OF MY OWN FAMILY (IV)

My father was also named Manuel, and lived a difficult time: Natural from Almudevar`s village  in Huesca, born during the Republic times, when Barcelona had proclaimed the catalan people autonomy and the anarchism took possession of the streets, oblivious to what was preparing certainly. He was a little boy with 7 siblings, when the civil war lived, in the battlefront of Tardienta-Almudevar. With them used to hide in cellars or vineyards when gunner exchange occurred, and lived the hardships of a tough war. The most shocking thing was for him to contemplate with horror the bodies shotted still with its clogs taking, near ravines at the Sotonera. Still very young, he was fortunate after getting rid of military service, and after the Stabilization State Plan, followed in Spain without having to migrate as many, driving tractors Caterpillar

American or Japanese, in large hydraulic infrastructure were made across the width of country under the government of General Franco.

My grandfather, Lanuza Esperanza, Serapio, died the same year I was born. The first was a laborer and foreman then, from the start of construction in 1915, in the "Planillo" near Almudévar. The Construction of the Sotonera’s hydro Reservoir and the Monegros’ desert canal, could mean that my grand was pioneer on the large agricultural transformation brought about by the creation of Upper Aragon Irrigation Association in 1913, which aimed to irrigate an area of ​​300,000 hectares, with the leveling of agricultural parcels and the intensive use of water from the Pyrenees. 

Widower of Josephine Abad, curiously knew his house by the name of her mother, my great grandmother Serafina.

My great-grandfather, Lasala Lanuza, Manuel (1850-1906), died young yet still leaving widow and three small children. It was a medium-sized farmers, which had a servant and horses. His widow Pascuala in a turbulent period of the War of Morocco and General Strikes, is forced to borrow from House Otal’s House and lose the best property she had, in Valley wells.

My great great grandfather Manuel Lanuza Argacha (1816-1879), born in Almudévar was a very industrious man who managed an equity of 18 properties in a difficult period marked by the Carlist Wars and the Law of Confiscation. Married to Teresa Lasala in Almudevar, was oblivious to the Carlist occupation at Huesca in 1837, after the defeat of liberal general Iribarren. Instead the vine growing intensified, bringing new estates and planting new vinyards. It can be reached which extend the hold in order to improve the capacity of the same. In any case, the supremacy of the vine and pruning obsession became clear in Marriage Articles granted to his son Manuel, days before his death.

My second great grandfather, Lanuza Boned, Diego (1765-1834) , was born in Alcalá of Gurrea. He married in 1792 with a young girl from Tardienta named Mary Argacha Laguardia and they went to live to Almudevar .  At that time, they bought a house in Baron of Romagna Street , 89 , home of the family.

Never it was known as Lanuza house, because it had already in Almudevar a house known as Lanuza, despite anyone was having that name there. In Almudevar, they remained inside sheltered of raids of Nuñez de Arce, plus operations in Santa Quiteria mountain performed for the famous partisan Felipe Perena.

My third great grandfather, Lanuza Crespo, Joseph ( 1745-1801 ? ). Was born in Alcalá of Gurrea. He married in 1759 to the niece of a priest from Huesca, Rose Boned Usieto. At that time , the neighborhood of the Cathedral was the cultural center of Huesca, thanks to the canons of scholarly activity as Cappuccino or Novella Vicente Ramón Pérez Ubico , known as father Huesca, and dynamism of the Sertorian University of Huesca ( Catalan Universities except Cervera, were closed after the war of succession and Catalan students for nearly a century came to Huesca to study civil law and medicine ) . The truth is that it was a time of economic boom and the crops were getting better with the sequent baby boom. People not only tilled new lands but also new vineyards and almond trees are planted.

My fourth great grandfather, Lanuza Loscertales, Diego ( 1701-1756 ? ) , Was born in Igriés. Perhaps he left as a child to Isuela’s Taverns where he worked for ten years, until he married to Ventura Crespo Lasierra in 1734 . She was daughter of an old family of farmers based in Alcalá of Gurrea since the sixteenth century. This migration coincides with the launch of two major projects for Huesca given by the engineer, writer, painter and intellectual Francis Artiga.

They were the marsh of Arguis and the octagonal building of the Sertorian University. Marsh begins in 1686 at the head of Isuela River, and ends in the eighteenth century as the masterpiece of the Isuela watershed irrigation , of which among others are part of the dams of Igriés (XIV century), Nueno, Arascués and in the XVI century  the largest canal, moreover the pools of Cortes and Loreto as well as transfer of water to Borés Village.

My great fifth grandfather, Lanuza Ascaso, Diego ( 1675-1720 ? ); was a native of Igriés Village . He lived the last part of the secular crisis of the end of the Habsburg dynasty: confiscatory taxation, exorbitant debt and decline in agricultural activity furthermore population stagnation; which led to much of the population to beggary and plunder. Married to Teresa Loscertales, they seen as behind the Succession War, comes a new era: abolished the privileges of Aragon Reign and its Institutions (Courts, Justice and Deputation). The old Councils born in the Middle Ages, which were chaired by the prior of justice and Juries ( charges elected besides renewed annually ) , were deleted and replaced by loyal officials life tenure.

My great grandfather sixth, was Victorian Lanuza Oliván ( 1675-1720? ) . After surviving the disaster last great plague epidemic during 1651, that decimated a quarter of the population, in 1663 married to Mary Ascaso, daughter of a gentry’s family of Apiés Village. The Regency of Mariana of Austria, the ongoing wars and political instability in the power struggles, famine and economic issues, make it a time with little hope of life. Widower remarries also a widow named Ursula Alegre in 1678 from Almudevar.

My seventh great grandfather, was Victorian Lanuza ( 1595-1642? ). He´s the most historic and unknown character of my antecessors. He lived a time of change, which coincides with the cultural heyday of Huesca City, to a period of economic expansion that will definitely end with the expulsion of the Moors in 1611 and It´s marked by the development of the distant Thirty Years War. All preceded by the loss of the Aragonese liberties and the final decline of the ability to influence the Lanuza’s family.

From this period are the building of Town Hall of the City, are the bell Juana Pazienza ( 1576 ), the seat of honor or justice consistory of Huesca ( 1578 ), the City Archive ( 1592 ), portraits of four of the first kings of Aragon ( 1626 ) , Construction of the Church of Sant Lorenzo ( 1604-1624 ), and the Sertorian University builds its Auditorium, between on thick Romanesque walls the Old Royal Palace. He´s also a contemporary of John Vizencio Lastanosa, collector and patron oscensis, which gathered around himself a wide circle of writers and artists. The most important writer was Baltasar Gracian, who published in Huesca several of his works by his patronage. Its library and museum were one of the most outstanding examples of Spanish European phenomenon of Cabinets of Curiosities and Wonders Cameras .

At Lastanosa’s gardens were a large pond and a vegetable navigable maze. His Chapel and Crypt -mausoleum of the Cathedral is a good example Baroque art.

Between 1614-1615 there is a severe episode of starvation caused by drought. The consequent epidemics cause a great mortality among the City population. In the year 1624 closes the municipal brothel ( Public House ), which has been operating for nearly a century. In 1600 the city had seven convents and four nunneries: In the seventeenth century were founded other nine. The oscensis clergy, both regular and secular, got to add about 500 people, it arrived at 10 % rate of the city population.

We know that he married Mary Oliván , whose family was from Apiés, and in about the same time , namely 1617, was warden of Apiés  Sir John Lanuza.  My grand Victorian was Jury in 1639 at Igriés Council, whereas at Igriés Council Act in 1567 nobody of my family was named.

At this point, he arise the following questions:

1st ) Where come Lanuzas from Igriés.

2nd) Who are the Lanuza of Apiés .

3rd ) Why they settled in Igriés or Apiés respectively.

To respond in some way to these issues; back to the story of Huesca, up to this time.