José Mariano Borrell Lemus

First Marquis of Guáimaro, Knight of Catalonia, Colonel of Militia of the Four Villas and Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. He was one of the wealthiest landowners who lived in the central region of Cuba during the colonial period.

José Mariano Borrell was born in the city of Trinidad, Cuba, being baptized in the Parroquial Mayor of his native city on October 13 of that same year. His parents were the wealthy landowners José Mariano Borrell y Padrón and Josefa María de Lemus y Jiménez.

He inherited the Guáimaro Sugar Mill (valued at the death of his father, in 1830, at 459,527 pesos, and which three years earlier had achieved the highest sugar production in the world: 82,000 arrobas). José Mariano is the one who gives the definitive form to this beautiful residence; he hired the celebrated Italian architect, decorator and painter Daniel Dall Aglio for the interior decoration of the dwelling house of the Guáimaro sugar mill, work that by February 1859 had already been completed, it is assumed that he had it done in the 1840s and which consisted of one of the most beautiful rooms in the country, covered with mural paintings from floor to ceiling, with Romantic and Neoclassical themes in the European style.

Thanks to this sugar mill Don José Mariano became the most powerful landowner of the town. The slave workforce of the Guáimaro Sugar Mill, on October 22, 1861, was 424 men (Congos, Creoles and Moors) and 83 women (Congo women, Moorish women and Creole women), while at the estate there were nine males and 10 females.

Borrell was one of those who voted for the death by firing squad of the Cuban patriot José Isidoro de Armenteros and his companions Rafael Arcís and Fernando Hernández y Echerri on August 18, 1851.

Due to his contributions to the Spanish crown, Queen Isabella II of Spain granted him, by Royal decree of June 5, 1860, the title of Marquis of Guáimaro. Four years later, on June 5, 1864, he died in the city of Trinidad. A few years earlier, on September 1, 1861, he had made his will.

On October 28, 1836 he married Doña María de la Concepción Villafaña y Galeto with whom he had 6 children:
Pablo Borrell y Villafaña (1837),
Federico Eduardo Borrell y Villafaña (1838),
José Mariano Borrell y Villafaña (1839),
María Josefa Borrell y Villafaña (1840),
María del Carmen Borrell y Villafaña (1841),
Juana de Dios Borrell y Villafaña (1842)