He was appointed on July 6, 1936 and was in charge of the Cádiz Institution for two weeks, before the military coup and the subsequent Civil War led him to exile in Mexico.
The portrait of the Cádiz politician hangs from today along with the rest of the State delegates in the gallery of the Plenary Hall of the institution
The ceremony of tribute and recognition held today was attended by relatives of Campos Milan from Mexico, Canada, the Canary Islands and Cádiz.
The figure of this delegate, a great unknown in the history of the Free Trade Zone, came to light during the research for the book that journalist José Antonio Hidalgo wrote for the Consortium in 2011
“Today we have partially settled a moral debt that history and this Institution had with the figure of Manuel Campos Milan.” In this way, the delegate of the Cádiz Free Trade Zone, Fran González, has remembered one of his predecessors, Manuel Campos Milan, who was a delegate of the Consortium when the coup d'état broke out in 1936 that gave rise to the Spanish Civil War and the that the Consortium has honored today.
This morning, the Cádiz Free Trade Zone celebrated the recovery ceremony for the figure of this republican politician from Cádiz, who had been appointed on July 6 and who was at the head of the Consortium for just two weeks. Campos Milan lived in exile in Mexico and was largely unknown in the History of the Cádiz Institution where the only two minutes of the councils in which he was able to be present were “lost” among the files of almost a century.
This lack of knowledge has spread over time and his family was not aware of this part of his biography either until during the research carried out in 2011 for the commemorative book of the 80th anniversary commissioned by the Zona Franca from journalist José Antonio Hidalgo, his figure came out. to the light.
The tribute, in which a painting of Campos Milan by the Cádiz artist Cecilio Chaves was discovered, which from today is incorporated into the portrait gallery in the Consortium's plenary hall, was attended by relatives of the historic delegate who had come from different places. parts of the world (Mexico, Canada, Canary Islands), in addition to residents in Cádiz.
The mayor of Cádiz, José María González, also attended the celebration; the subdelegate of the Government in Cádiz, José Pacheco; the consul of Mexico in Andalusia, Eduardo González Biedma; members of the Plenary and the Executive Committee; the painter Cecilio Chaves; the former delegates of the Free Trade Zone, José de Mier and Daniel Vázquez; the journalist José Antonio Hidalgo; and the person in charge of the Archive Department of the Free Zone, Tránsito Ramírez Bonassi, a collaborator of the previous one during the execution of the book and who was the person who alerted about the existence of the until then unknown delegate.
Fran González thanked the former delegates present and the rest of the attendees for their assistance and expressed his satisfaction with this recovery of the figure of Campos Milan and added that “this act aims to be compensation, recognition but, above all, recovery.” for the history of the Free Zone, of politics, of the city and of the country, of the figure of a politician who not only had to abandon his vocation as a public servant and the construction of a society with ideals due to a coup d'état and a fratricidal war, but he had to leave his country, begin again in exile and suffer the heaviest burden of the Franco dictatorship: the annihilation through oblivion that was sought for so many years.
The current head of the Consortium has had words of recognition for the creators of the reconstruction of this history and has highlighted "the tenacity of José Antonio Hidalgo, to whom I deeply appreciate the opportunity he has given us to rescue the detail of the history of Manuel Campos Milan and his role in the history of the Free Zone of Cádiz, thanks also to the archival work of our colleague Tránsito Ramírez Bonassi, who is also with us today, responsible for the Free Zone Archive that discovered and brought to light the delegate Manuel Campos Milan during the research for the preparation of the book of the 80 years of history of the Consortium in 2011.”
The commemorative day was completed with a tour of the fiscal premises in which the relatives of Campos Milan visited the facilities and later went to the City Hall accompanied by the top officials of the Cádiz City Council. The commemoration concluded with a visit to the Unicaja Foundation where the Machado brothers' collections are displayed.
