Novas Regueira, José

Beluso, 1921 – Florida, 2002. Exile and publicist.

Son of José Novas García, one of the founders of the Unión Cultural Bueu, Beluso y sus contornos in New York. He was born in 1921 in Beluso and migrated to New York in 1928, where he reunited, along with his mother, with José Novas father. He returned to Galicia in 1931. In 1936, after the fascist uprising, he was part of the resistance to the rebel forces and managed to escape thanks to the US nationality that his father had obtained in 1928, which allowed them to leave Galicia on an ocean liner to New York. In the United States, he served in the US Navy, with a post in Central America during World War II. After the conflict, he graduated from Brown University and began working for Colgate-Palmolive in the Department of International Advertising. It would be the beginning of a successful advertising career that also led him to become Gillette’s director of international advertising and to found his own radio and television distribution and production company, Laradiotel (Latin American Radio and Television Corporation) and later Publicidad Novas, which would be integrated into the agency Leo Burnett. He was named world president of the IAA (International Advertising Association), being the first Ibero-American in this position. In 1993, he created the Fundación Novas in Beluso, which provides scholarships to excellent students with limited financial resources, and was named “Favorite” Son’ of Bueu in 1997. He died in Florida in 2002. Since 2009, there is a square with his name in Beluso (Source: manuscript ‘El hijo de un emigrante’ by José Novas Regueiro).