Juan Romero de Figueroa

Juan Romero de Figueroa (Gibraltar, 16 September 1646 - id. 7 July 1720) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest, in charge of the Parish Church of St. Mary the Crowned (Santa Maria la Coronada y San Bernardo) during the last years of Gibraltar's Spanish period and first ones of the British period, until his death. He remained at his post even after the territory's capture by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1704 on behalf of the Archduke Charles, pretender to the Spanish throne in the War of the Spanish Succession, when most of its population abandoned Gibraltar (only about 60 out of 4,000 remained).

Juan Romero de Figueroa was born in Gibraltar and baptized on 16 September 1646 in the Church of St. Mary the Crowned. His parents were Álvaro Martín and Leonor Vázquez. He took the minor orders in 1661, and was appointed deputy chancellor of the Seminary of Cádiz in 1674. Since 1682 he had its parish in Gibraltar, and was the priest of the Parish Church of St. Mary the Crowned on 4 August 1704 when the city capitulated to the besieging Anglo-Dutch forces. Along with his curate and the bell ringer he successfully protected his church from the plundering soldiery which sacked the town after the surrender. Other churches in the territory were desecrated.

The and the definite phrasing of the Treaty of Utrecht allowed for the practice of the Catholic Faith, so Romero de Figueroa went on as the priest of the Catholic population of the town until his decease, in 1720. In order to facilitate and stabilise ecclesiastical governance, the Bishop of Cádiz y Ceuta, who had jurisdiction over the church in Gibraltar, made him the first Vicar General of Gibraltar. The altar of the Blessed Sacrament in the Cathedral of St. Mary the Crowned keeps a marble tablet with the initials of Juan Romero de Figueroa. His mortal remains lay buried in there.

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