Hacienda La Soledad

The Hacienda La Soledad, whose name is linked to the marian worship of an ancient noble sevillian brotherhood, is today an olive and cereal farm unrelated to the tasks of the mill. However, its economic past, documented since the 16th century, linked to the powerful family of sevillian bankers, The Espinosa family, who owned it until the 17th century, they placed it in the center of a commercial business that was relegating the vineyards for the olive groves, olive oils, wools and soaps.
Its subsequent owners, the Count-Duke of Olivares (1578-1626); again Mr. Francisco Espinosa Gúzman (1626-1699); Mr. Adrián Delgado Ayala (1699-1701); Mr. Félix Anguiano, whose common denominator is to be rich and commercial merchants, take advantage of their commercial networks to also commercialise excellent wool, soaps and citrus fruits. The English Industrial Revolution was an important key to their great economic boom in the 18th century, as happened to the rest of sevillian’s estate..
The economic exploitation model, increasingly ambitious, forced to modify and modernize the primitive oil mill while adding new work yards to the two primal “the mill and the manor” to complet a total of four.
When Mr. Francisco Delgado Ayala sold The Estate to the Gómez de Barreda family in 1737, in whose hands it remains until our days, The Farmhouse had already suffered the imprint of an important remodeling and profused decoration centered on the
Courtyard “of the Manor”. Delgado Ayala explained in his testament “...It had been raised from its foundations and that it had cost him a fortune...”. Mr. Francisco Gómez de Barreda Sámano, knight of Santiago and of the Council of his Majesty in his treasury Accounting of Quentas, from Saro, arrived to Andalusia with the important Royal Political Mandate to become in: Quartermaster and General Manager of the Royal Tobacco Factories of that city and its kingdom and the Royal Customs of it...
His sevillian adaptation came soon through several land investments and “Hacienda La Soledad” was his flagship. His bravery and determination was a point in coomon again with the owners before him. Linked to The Indias Carrier Trade and to the White Expoter, he got back into the economic business and focused his dreams of the hamlet; posters with his titles and business position, shields, equestrian painting at his private stables… His son, Mr. Francisco Gomez de Barreda y Perez, first one of sevillian dynasty married to Catalina Diaz de Lavandero, daughter of Torrenueva Masquess, completed his father´s dream by designing a cross shipped garden at the old citric one, which is still on nowadays. After two Gomez de Barreda generations, the satates moves to the hands of the marriage formed by Francisco Gomez de Barreda Varona and his aunt Catalina Gomez de Barreda Ruiz de Mazmela, who again brings back together both families on their daughter Maria Dolores. Quite a curious occurrence during that second half of the nineteenth century, was the marriage of Maria Dolores with her relative Nicolas Maestre Lobo (María Ana Gomez de Barreda Diaz de Lavandero great-grandson), will turn the future of La Soledad to his current owners who,with the last restoration of the property, just brought
back all its past beauty.