Logbook · 3 places

The birth of Félix de Azara

Barbuñales, Somontano de Barbastro, Huesca

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Historical milestones

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The birth of Félix de Azara

Historical milestone · Barbuñales, Somontano de Barbastro, Huesca

Image of Barbuñales, not of the place itself.

Félix de Azara was born in Barbuñales on 18 May 1742, son of the feudal lord of Lizana Alejandro de Azara and brother of the bishop of Barcelona Eustaquio and the diplomat José Nicolás. A soldier trained in Barcelona, he served in the Infantry Regiment of Galicia and was wounded in the expedition against Algiers; in 1781 he left for South America to delimit, under the Treaty of San Ildefonso, the borders between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions, a mission that was meant to last a few months and stretched to twenty years, mostly in Paraguay. With no scientific training and guided only by a translation of Buffon, he spent that time observing mammals and birds and described 448 species, half of them unknown; Darwin later cited his observations and Goya painted his portrait. He died in Barbuñales in 1821.

18 de mayo de 1742

Photo: 19Tarrestnom65 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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