Florencio García Goyena was a Spanish jurist.

García Goyena studied law in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 and Salamanca

Salamanca

Salamanca is a city in western Spain, in the community of Castile and León. Because it is known for its beautiful buildings and urban environment, the Old City was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. It is the most important university city in Spain and is known for its contributions to...

 before serving as legal counsel to the Cortes

Parliament

A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...

 of Navarra and the governors of the provinces of Léon

León (province)

León is a province of northwestern Spain, in the northwestern part of the autonomous community of Castile and León.About one quarter of its population of 500,200 lives in the capital, León. The weather is cold and dry during the winter....

, Granada

Granada

Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...

 and Zaragoza

Zaragoza

Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...

. A liberal, he went into French exile from 1823 to 1834. Back in Spain, he served as fiscal of Burgos

Burgos

Burgos is a city of northern Spain, historic capital of Castile. It is situated at the edge of the central plateau, with about 178,966 inhabitants in the city proper and another 20,000 in its suburbs. It is the capital of the province of Burgos, in the autonomous community of Castile and León...

 and as official in the provinces of Navarra, Guipúzcoa and Zaragoza. In 1835, García Goyena was appointed a judge of the appeals court in Burgos and later of the Audiencia and the Supreme Court in Madrid. In 1847 he briefly served as Minister of Justice.

He chaired a commission that produced, in 1851, a draft civil code

Civil code

A civil code is a systematic collection of laws designed to comprehensively deal with the core areas of private law. A jurisdiction that has a civil code generally also has a code of civil procedure...

 for Spain, most of it written by García Goyena. Although the code was not adopted due to the strong opposition of leading regional families, who saw their power base threatened by the proposed harmonisation of regional inheritance and property laws, it was the basis of the codification later accomplished by Alonso Martínez

Manuel Alonso Martínez

Manuel Alonso Martínez was a Spanish jurist and politician, and the principal redactor of the Spanish Civil Code of 1888/89.After working as a Burgos attorney, he entered public service in 1854 as a member of the Cortes...

in 1888/89.