Francisco Coello

Francisco Coello de Portugal y Quesada (Jaén, April 26, 1822 - Madrid, September 30, 1898) was a Spanish cartographer and military man. Author of Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar, he was a member of the Royal Academy of History, the and the General Board of Statistics, in which he participated in the planning of a general cadastre for Spain. He also held the title of Knight of the Order of San Fernando and the Cross of Military Merit. He was one of the most outstanding cartographers in Spain in the 19th century. He retired from the Army with the rank of colonel.

Biography

Early years Son of Diego Coello de Portugal y García del Castillo and Josefa Quesada y Vial, Between 1836 and 1839, he studied at the Academy of Military Engineering of Guadalajara, after which he would obtain the rank of lieutenant. Cover of the Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar, his magnum opus.

Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar Upon his return from Africa, he continued to work closely with Pascual Madoz and his famous Diccionario geográfico-estadístico-histórico de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar, in which Coello was in charge of the cartography. His work was published in a separate book, entitled Atlas de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar (in English: Atlas of Spain and its Overseas Possessions), Specifically, in 1847, Francisco Coello and Pascual Madoz made a request to the City Council of Madrid for the cartographic base of a map of the city to scale 1:1,250, which was finished in 1846 by the road engineers Merlo, Gutiérrez and Ribera — a project directed by Mesonero Romanos — to add it to the Atlas, in which they would include it finally with a scale 1:5,000, in 1849. This map was later designated by the City Council of Madrid as "Plano Oficial de la Villa" (Official Map of the City). The Atlas was the first work to reflect the new territorial division of the country in 1833.

Project of the general navigation lines and railroads in the Spanish Peninsula On October 19, 1849, Francisco Coello married Aurora Pacheco Casani, who was nine years younger than him, and with whom he had four children: Adolfo, Gonzalo, Carlos, and Aurora. which outlined the guidelines to be followed in the development of transport infrastructures in Spain and advocated for an integral conception of the system of roads, railroads, canals and rivers. He defended a configuration of the railway network with both radial and transversal components, going beyond all the plans drawn up until then, whose structure had always been radial. He also believed that the development of a good communications system could constitute a vehicle for bringing Spain and Portugal closer together politically, in line with his Iberianist conviction. which would serve as a support for the Treasury. This depended on the deficient system of land surveys, whose information came from the declarations of the owners themselves and was, therefore, of doubtful veracity.

In 1861, under the direction of , In this context, Coello's financial problems became evident around 1864, which finally caused him to lose ownership of the property due to debts on January 1, 1869. He also strongly defended the interest that Spain should have in the occupation of territories in North Africa, specifically the “Cabo del Agua”. In this line of Africanism, it is worth mentioning that he was part, together with the regenerationist Joaquín Costa, of the Spanish Society of Africanists and Colonists, founded in 1883, and whose creation had already been proposed by Coello in 1881.