Image copyright John Turton for the Hispanic Liverpool Project
Kirsty Hooper, Head of Hispanic Studies at the University of Warwick, tells us more about an exciting upcoming event held in partnership with the Museum of Liverpool:
“Did you or your family work for the Larrinaga company, at sea, in their Liverpool offices or in one of their family homes around Sefton Park?
Does your family have connections with Liverpool’s Hispanic community?
Do you have information, stories or photographs that you would like to share?
We would love to hear from you at our drop-in event at the Museum of Liverpool, Saturday 2 June 1-4pm. You can contribute photographs or documents to our community collection, and see related items from the Museum’s own collection up close.
There will be the following events during the afternoon:
- 1.30, 2.30, 3.30pm: Talks – Liverpool and the Larrinagas
- 2pm, 3pm: Spotlight on the collections
The Larrinaga family came to Liverpool in the 1850s from the fishing port of Mundaka in Spain’s Basque Country. Within twenty years they had built a global shipping network connecting Liverpool and Mundaka with Bilbao, Cadiz, Barcelona, Manila and Havana. The Larrinagas’ fleet of ships was crewed by Basque, Spanish and Filipino sailors, and hundreds of these sailors and their families settled in Liverpool. Many Basque and Spanish women worked as lodging house keepers, domestic servants, shipstore keepers, seamstresses and laundresses. By the 1870s, the Larrinaga, Olano and Longa families were at the centre of a thriving Hispanic Liverpool community. Many of their descendants live here today.
As part of the Hispanic Liverpool project, we are looking for help to understand the Larrinaga legacy in Liverpool. Find out more about our project!”