Miguel Ángel Muguiro, who was the third son of The Muguiro family, was born in 1880. In 1917, he married María Guillamas Caro, but hey din not have children. He died in in 1956.
He used to spend summer holidays in Burgos, in the “Palacio de la Isla”. In 1938, he was sent to Budapest (Hungary). There, as diplomatic, he saved many Jews persecuted by the German government of Miklós Horthy.
To act in their favor, Muguiro rescued an old decree promulgated by Primo de Rivera in 1924. According to that decree all the Sephardi Jews will immediately obtain Spanish nationality. However, this decree expired in 1931, but Muguiro used it, anyways, to try to save the life of the Sephardi Jews in Hungary.
Also, he interceded to save a group of 500 children whose destination were the gas chambers in Poland. He got everyone a passport and he sent them to Tangier, which in those days was a Spanish colony.
All these actions gave him a very bad reputation among Hungarians and Germans, who wanted him to be dismissed. Once that happened, his place was occupied by the Embassy secretary, who were also involved in the rescue of persecuted Jews. His name was Angel Sanz-Briz.
In 1940, Miguel Ángel Muguiro was awarded with the ‘Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic’. And in 2000, he was rescued from oblivion when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain dedicated a web page to its memory called ‘Spanish diplomats during the Holocaust’. Later, in 2007, he was honored again in an exhibition entitled “Visas for freedom” organized by Casa Sefarad in Madrid.
*Source: “Historia del Palacio de la Isla de Burgos (1883-12010)” de Isaac Rilova Pérez