Aragon Guide

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  Felix de Azara by Goya

Felix de Azara, Spanish naturalist born in Barbuñales (Huesca, Aragon) in 18 May 1746 and died there in 1811. He attended a mathematical school at Barcelona and in 1767 became an army lieutenant with an engineering specialty. In 1775 he took part in the disastrous Spanish attack on Algiers commanded by Alejandro O'Reilly and received a promotion to Brigadier-General, as well as a severe chest wound.

In 1781 he went to South America as one of the commissioners to settle the boundary between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions; and his researches, prosecuted for twenty years, made him an authority on the natural and political history of Paraguay and the Plata region.

His "Essai sur l'histoire naturelle des quadrupedes de la province du Paraguay" was first published in French (Paris, 1801), and afterward in Spanish (Madrid, 1802), under the auspices of his brother, the Chevalier José Nicolas de Azara (b. in 1731, died in Paris in 1804), Spanish ambassador to France, who made a Spanish translation of Middleton's Cicero.

Felix de Azara's masterpiece, "Voyage dans l'Amérique méridionale depuis 1781 jusqu'en 1801" (4 vols., Paris, 1809), translated by Sonnini, was edited by Walckenaer, the French naturalist, whose commentaries, as well as those of Sonnini and Cuvier, give additional value to the work. It contains a narrative of the discovery and conquest of Paraguay and the Plata River, and ornithological descriptions. A Spanish translation by Varela was published in Montevideo.