Gaspar de Portolá
Gaspar de Portolá was the Catalan officer who led the Sacred Expedition of 1769 that took Spain into Alta California, the first governor of the Californias, the man who founded the presidio of San Diego with Serra, marched north looking for the bay of Monterey that Vizcaino had described in 1602, walked past it without recognising it, and on 1 November 1769 became the first European to look on San Francisco Bay, which he had not been looking for and regarded as an obstacle. He found Monterey on the second attempt in 1770, founded the presidio there, handed the province over, and went home to be governor of Puebla and to die in Lerida. He was born at Os de Balaguer in 1716, served in the Spanish army in Italy and Portugal, and was sent to Baja California in 1767 as governor with the task of expelling the Jesuits from their missions there, which he did with courtesy and, his letters say, regret. The visitor-general Galvez, alarmed by the Russians on the north Pacific coast, ordered the occupation of the harbours of San Diego and Monterey with soldiers and Franciscans rather than settlers, and Portola led the two land parties north from Baja California in 1769 while two ships went by sea. The ships arrived with their crews dying of scurvy, the land parties lost most of their Indian auxiliaries to desertion and disease, and when Portola marched north from San Diego in July with sixty-three men, Serra staying behind, it was on mule meat by the end. They reached Monterey Bay in October and did not believe it was the great harbour Vizcaino had praised, went on, and from a ridge above what is now Pacifica saw the bay to the east, which the expedition's diarist Crespi wrote could hold all the navies of Europe. They came back to San Diego in January 1770 with the men eating their mules, and Portola was ready to abandon the colony when the supply ship appeared on the day he had fixed to leave. He sailed and marched to Monterey again in the spring, founded the presidio and mission there on 3 June 1770 with Serra, and left California in July for Mexico, never to return. He was governor of Puebla from 1777 to 1785 and died in Lerida in October 1786. The state of California put his statue in Pacifica in 1988, a gift from Catalonia.
- Lived: 1716 CE – 1786 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: soldier, explorer, governor
