Florencio Garcia Goyena

Florencio Garcia Goyena was a Spanish jurist and politician who lived from 1783 to 1855, born in Tafalla in Navarre. He studied law in Madrid and Salamanca before serving as a judge on several courts including the Supreme Court in Madrid, as legal counsel to provincial governors and to the Cortes of Navarra, and as Spain's Minister of Justice in 1847, the same year he briefly served as Prime Minister of Spain under Queen Isabella II. He chaired the commission that produced Spain's 1851 draft civil code, most of which he wrote personally; regional opposition kept it from adoption in his lifetime, but it became the basis for the civil code that Alonso Martinez completed in 1888 and 1889.