Francisco de Paula Martínez de la Rosa y Cornejo (10 March 1787 – 7 February 1862) was a Spanish statesman and dramatist and the first prime minister of Spain to receive the title of President of the Council of Ministers.
He became Prime Minister in the opening months of the First Carlist War and his liberal government oversaw the promulgation of a new Spanish constitution: the Spanish Royal Statute of 1834.
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Biography
He was born at Granada, and educated at the university there.
He won popularity with a series of epigrams on local celebrities published under the title of El Cementerio de momo. During the struggle against Napoleon he took the patriotic side, was elected deputy, and at Cádiz produced his first play, Lo que puede un empleo, a prose comedy in the manner of the younger Leandro Fernández de Moratín. La Viuda de Padilia (1814), a tragedy modelled upon Alfieri, was less acceptable to the Spanish public.
Meanwhile, the author became more and more engulfed in politics, and in 1814 was banished to Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera on the Barbary Coast, where he remained until 1820, when he was suddenly recalled and appointed prime minister. During the next three years he was the most unpopular man in Spain; denounced as a revolutionist by the Conservatives and as a reactionary by the Liberals, he alienated the sympathies of all parties, and his rhetoric earned for him the contemptuous nickname of Rosita la Pastelera (Rosie the compromiser/cake maker). In 1822, Francisco Martínez de la Rosa appointed Diego de Medrano y Treviño as Minister of the Interior, replacing Moscoso in the position.