governor in office had revoked his accreditation as an educator. There he continued to speak about his cause. Baldorioty de Castro became known as "The Father of Puerto Rican Autonomy". On 19 November 1872, Ramon Baldorioty de Castro together with Luis Padial, Julio Vizcarrondo and the Spanish Minister of Overseas Affairs, Segismundo Moret, presented a proposal for the abolition of slavery. On 22 March 1873, the Spanish Government approved the proposal, which became known as the Moret Law. Later years Baldorioty de Castro returned to Puerto Rico in 1873 and went to live in the City of Ponce. There, he founded the newspaper El Derecho (The Law). He was also the founder of a weekly paper called La Crónica, in which he expressed his ideas on autonomy for the island. In 1887, Baldorioty de Castro co-founded, along with José de Diego, the Autonomist Party of Puerto Rico. He named a young and upcoming politician, Antonio R. Barceló, the position of party Secretary. The Autonomist Party of Puerto Rico became one of Puerto Rico's first political parties. Its credo was that Puerto Rico should pick its own government and should have a representative in the Spanish Parliament. The Spanish government, however, considered Baldorioty de Castro a dangerous person and a dissenter and had him jailed in Fort San Felipe del Morro in San Juan. Although he was not in jail for long and was soon released, his health suffered greatly during this imprisonment. Román Baldorioty de Castro died in Ponce on 30 September 1889. He is buried in Ponce's Cementerio Viejo cemetery which was renamed "Panteón Nacional Román Baldorioty de Castro". Legacy The cities of Bayamón, Juana Díaz, San Germán and San Juan have honored the memory of Baldorioty de Castro by naming plazas after him. Puerto Rico Highway 26, called the Román Baldorioty de Castro Expressway, is the main highway to the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport. In Puerto Rico's capital city, where the Baldorioty de Castro Expressway meets the Condado Lagoon in the Miramar neighborhood of Santurce, an obelisk was constructed in the center of the city park surrounding the lagoon. The obelisk is in honor of Baldorioty de Castro. A bronze statue of Baldority de Castro stands at the base of the statue as a gift of the people of Puerto Rico. There are schools named after him in other areas of Puerto Rico. The province of Azua