Matías Alonso Criado (1852-1922) was a Spanish - Uruguayan writer and diplomat. He was born in Astorga, León, and received a degree in Law from the University of Salamanca. He relocated to Montevideo in 1874, where he would live for almost half a century. He established the Boletín Jurídico Administrativo, the first journal of legislation and jurisprudence in Uruguay. Later, in 1876, he began the publication of the Legislative Collection of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay, an annual registry of laws that reached more than thirty volumes. He did not confine himself to academia, and would find himself involved in controversies that divided his compatriots. In 1877 he founded and directed the daily newspaper La Colonia Española a position he would eventually publicly abandon. He edited a compilation of writings by the Spanish agronomist Juan de Cominges, three volumes of an anthology titled 20,000 thoughts, published in Buenos Aires, and several pamphlets and a map of Paraguay - Criado had business interests in the neighboring country. He was also for a time Uruguay's consul for both Chile and Paraguay.