Gaspar de Portolà i Rovira (1716 – 1784) was a soldier,
governor of
Baja and
Alta California (1767–1770),
explorer and founder of
San Diego and
Monterey. He was born in Os de Balaguer, province of
Lleida, in
Catalonia,
Spain, of Spanish
nobility.
Don Gaspar de Portolà served as a soldier in the Spanish army in
Italy and
Portugal. He was commissioned
ensign in 1734, and
lieutenant in 1743, and died in either
New Spain or Spain in 1784.
By 1767, Jesuit missionaries on the peninsula of Baja California had established approximately twenty-three missions over a period of seventy-two years. Rumors were circulating that the Jesuits had amassed a fortune and were becoming very powerful. As part of the nearly global suppression of the Jesuits, King Carlos III ordered the Jesuits expelled at gunpoint and deported back to Spain. Following the command of the king, the viceroy of New Spain ordered the arrest and deportation of all Jesuits in missions and Don Gaspar de Portolà was charged with the expulsion of the Jesuits from Baja. The missions were turned over to the Franciscans, and later to the Dominicans.
Spain was driven to establish missions and other outposts in Alta California out of fear that the territory would be claimed by either the English, who not only had colonies on the East Coast of the continent, but had recently conquered Canada, or the Russians whose fur hunters were pressing down from Alaska to the Pacific Northwest's lower reaches. Dispatches of January 23, 1768, exchanged between King Carlos and the viceroy, set the wheels in motion to extend Spain's control up the Pacific Coast and establish colonies and missions at San Diego Bay and Monterey Bay, which had been discovered and described in reports by earlier explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno, who had mapped the California coastline for Spain, in 1602. In May, the Spanish Visitor General, José de Gálvez, proceeded to plan a four part expedition, two by sea and two by land, and Portolà volunteered to command the expedition.
All four detachments were to meet at the site of San Diego Bay. The first ship, the San Carlos, sailed from La Paz on January 10, 1769, and the San Antonio sailed on February 15. The first land party, led by Fernando Rivera y Moncada, left from the Mission San Fernando Velicata on March 24. With Rivera was Father Juan Crespi, famed diarist of the entire expedition. The expedition led by Portolà, which included Father Junípero Serra, the President of the Missions, along with a combination of missionaries, settlers, and leather-jacket soldiers, including José Raimundo Carrillo, left Velicata on May 15.
