Pedro Cebrián y Agustín

Pedro Cebrián y Agustín, portrait by José de Ibarra

Pedro Cebrián y Agustín , Count (Spanish: conde) of Fuenclara , Spanish grandee (born April 30, 1687 in Lucena de Jalón near Saragossa , Spain ; † August 6, 1752 in Madrid , Spain) was a Spanish officer , diplomat and colonial administrator, who officiated as Viceroy of New Spain.

Life

Origin and family

Pedro Cebrián came from a family of Spanish nobility. His father Enrique de Alagón y Pimentel, Count of Sástago, was one of the few supporters of the Bourbons in Aragón during the War of the Spanish Succession . After the death of his wife he was ordained a priest and became archdeacon of Aliaga (Teruel) .

Pedro's brother Miguel also embarked on a church career and served as Bishop of Córdoba from 1742 to 1752 . He inherited the title of Count of Fuenclara from his grandmother María de Alagón.

Military and diplomatic career in Europe

In the service of King Philip V , Pedro Cebrián fought as a young man in the War of the Spanish Succession. He took part in the siege of Barcelona (1706) and, together with his father, accompanied the king on his victorious entry into Saragossa on January 10, 1711.

In 1716 he married María Teresa Patiño y Attendolo, daughter of Baltasar Patiño, Margrave of Castelar and Superintendent General of the Kingdom of Aragón, who was also the niece of José de Patiño y Morales , the King's Finance Secretary, Council of War and State. Juan de Acuña , who was also to be appointed Viceroy of New Spain (from 1722), was among the witnesses .

In 1725 Pedro Cebrián was promoted to the court's finance council. With the death of his father in 1727 he took over the title of count from his grandmother and was accepted into the Order of Alcantara . In 1731 the king in Seville made him Spanish grandee.

With the support of his wife's uncle, José de Patiño, he was appointed Spanish ambassador to Venice in February 1734 . Two years later he went to the imperial court in Vienna as ambassador , where he stayed until 1738.

In 1738 he was transferred to the court of the Saxon Elector Friedrich August II in Dresden. He arrived there in July 1738 and stayed for two years. He was later commissioned to escort Princess Maria Amalia to Naples from there , after she had met the Prince of Asturias and King of Naples and Sicily (and later King of Spain) Charles III. had married. In Naples he was accepted into the Order of the Golden Fleece .

In April 1740, King Philip V ordered him back to Madrid to serve as chamberlain to the Infante Philip . He held this office until February 1742, when the king appointed him viceroy of New Spain to succeed the late Pedro de Castro y Figueroa .

Tenure as Viceroy of Spain

From 1739 Spain had been at war with England and the departure from Cebrián to Mexico had to be incognito. He traveled on a French ship from Rochefort (Charente-Maritime) to Santo Domingo , which was French at the time. From there, after some waiting time, it went on to Veracruz , where he arrived in October 1472. Fever forced him to stay in Veracruz for a few days until he made his official entry into Mexico City with the usual celebrations at the beginning of November and took over the official business of the Real Audiencia of Mexico , chaired by Pedro Malo de Villavicencio .

Because of the war with the British, he ordered the governors to renew the port fortifications and prepare for further attacks by the British fleet. In July 1743 he sent a Chinese ship with a cargo of 1.5 million silver pesos for the crown via the Philippines to Europe to avoid attacks by the British in the Caribbean and on the Atlantic route. The British corsair George Anson captured the ship and brought the cargo into his hand.

In Madrid, however, Cebrián's patron José de Patiño had died, and Zenón de Somodevilla y Bengoechea was in charge of the state. Somodevilla was suspicious of what Cebrián was doing and accused the viceroy of complicity; the investigations did not lead to any result.

The attacks by the British continued, for example on St. Augustine, Florida . To cover the costs of the war, Cebrián increased import duties and taxes for almost all areas of life. He also awarded titles of nobility and offices in return for appropriate payments and thus probably exceeded his legal powers.

The Italian scholar Lorenzo Boturini de Benaducci , who wrote a story of the Madonna of Guadalupe , collected donations during this time to give the portrait a golden crown. This action aroused the suspicion of the Spanish administration, and Viceroy Cebrián had Boturini arrested in June 1743 and imprisoned for nine months before he was disembarked for Spain on charges of having entered New Spain without valid papers and without authorization from the Council of India .

Under Cebrián's reign the aqueduct from Chapultepec to Salta del Agua was renewed. He also had several streets in Mexico City paved.

A curious uprising occurred in Puebla in 1744 : the bells were rung on the occasion of a visit by the viceroy to the local bishop. The population mistakenly took this as a sign that the revered Juan de Palafox y Mendoza had been beatified. When the error was cleared up, the people became angry and riots broke out, which were put down by military means.

Cebrián commissioned the geographer and historian José Antonio Villaseñor y Sánchez to write a comprehensive geography of New Spain, which should also contain an estimate of the total population for the first time. Villaseñor published the work in 1746 under the title Theatro Americano. Descripción general de los Reynos y Provincias de la Nueva España .

Relations with the Somodevilla government did not improve. In 1744 Somodevilla circulated a questionnaire containing serious allegations against Cebrián's administration. In response, the viceroy requested his replacement in early 1745 and gave reasons for his health. The replacement was promptly approved, and Madrid named the governor and captain-general of Cuba , Juan Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas, as his successor.

Late years in Spain

In November 1745 the new viceroy was appointed, but he did not arrive in Veracruz until June 1746. Cebrián left Mexico City in early July and sailed from Veracruz towards Havana on September 2nd .

He reached Europe in mid-1747. After a further period as ambassador in Vienna, he spent his last years in Madrid, where he died on August 6, 1752.

literature

• Juana Vázquez Gómez: Dictionary of Mexican Rulers, 1325–1997 . Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CT, USA 1997, ISBN 0-313-30049-6 , pp. 39-40 ( books.google.de ).
• Fernando Orozco: Gobernantes de México . 3. Edition. Panorama Editorial, Mexico City 2004, ISBN 968-38-0260-5 , p. 133-134 ( books.google.de ).

Web links

• Biography (spanish)
• brief history of his tenure (Spanish)

predecessor	Office	successor
Antonio Casado de Velasco	Spanish envoy in Venice 1734 to 1736	Luigi Riggio Branciforte
James Fitz-James Stuart (until 1733)	Spanish ambassador to Austria from 1736 to 1738	José Carpintero, Gt
	Spanish envoy to Saxony from 1738 to 1740
Pedro Malo de Villavicencio	Viceroy of New Spain 1742 to 1746	Juan Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas