Modern businesswoman born in the parish of Begoña in 1847 and died in Bilbao in 1927
Lucía Demetria Yarza Arregui, the businesswoman who bought the La Salve brewery from the widow of its creator José Schumann, was born in the parish of Begoña in 1847. She was the daughter of a gunsmith from Elgoibar, married to a woman from Arrasate, who settled in the town of Bilbao in the middle of the 19th century.
In 1870, Lucía married Francisco Pérez Pérez, a merchant from Alicante who sold fruit and esparto grass and who in 1871 opened the Bar Carabanchel in Arenal, located the cafés El Boulevard and El Tilo; he opened a grocery store in Somera, 15; as well as a tavern in Calle Esperanza, 14 and a grocery store in Gran Vía.
However, Francisco died in 1896 and Lucía had to add to the pain of being widowed that of raising her children and, in addition, she had to manage all her deceased husband's businesses, which she did through the Sociedad Viuda e Hijos de Francisco Pérez, given that at that time women could not own businesses and could only act commercially and legally through a male representative. A year after she was widowed, we find her at the window of the Bilbao Town Hall ing that a certificate of maternal consent be issued in favour of her son, Ildefonso Pérez, to move to England in order to engage in commerce.
Lucia modernises Carabanchel. She installs electric lights and embellishes it with Parisian counters and German tiles to compete with the nearby Arriaga café. This was not the only business she ran. In 1903, she applied for a municipal certificate stating that she owned a shop selling fruit, vegetables, preserves and other foodstuffs in Calle Ronda number 6, as she wished to open an account with the Customs for the export of coffee.
She also owned another grocery shop at Jardines, 12, and in 1905, she expanded her business by ing permission to take over from Ramón Artola the Café Arriaga, located on the ground floor of the theatre in Bilbao, together with the brewer José Schumann Cordas. When the latter died in 1910, his widow sold her share to Lucía, who also acquired the La Salve Beer Factory.
Beer is the future and Lucía has great entrepreneurial vision. She continued to diversify her investments by acquiring the Café Boulevard in El Arenal and the Hotel Excelsior in Plaza Nueva.
But the years do not pass in vain and when she feels older, she passes the baton to her children. Even so, a year before her death, Lucía, through the family company, still sued the town hall for the tax charged for the occupation of the public highway with the use of the street with the ‘veladores’, considering them excessive, and the following year, she litigated against the collection of the tax for public establishments, alleging that it was a tax for a surveillance service that was not complied with and that exceeded the established maximum limits. She appealed relentlessly until she reached the Supreme Court, which finally ruled in her favour.
Lucia died in 1927 and the procession was led by around thirty children from the Santa Casa de Misericordia, followed by gentlemen in top hats and tails carrying white axes, as was the custom at the time for any funeral of great respect for a person considered to be of great stature in the town of Bilbao.
Only she and her husband Francisco Pérez Pérez are in the family crypt, buried together and alone, at the express wish of Lucia, who wrote in her will that after she is buried, the vault should be sealed forever. It is an act of eternal love. And so it is done.
--Sources for the article: Archivo Foral del Territorio Histórico de Bizkaia. Ecclesiastical archives and the website of the Pérez Yarza heirs of La Salve beers.
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