Lerida: Instituto de Estudios Ilerdenses, 1983. First Edition (presumed; no prior editions or printings cited). Hardcover quarto in custom(?) green faux leather half spine and green marbled boards. 404 pages, 29 unnumbered leaves of plates (some folded): illustrations (some color); 25 cm Fine to fine(-). Hardcover. ISBN: 8400055314
Possible author inscription to dedication page. Handsomely bound. A standard biography of the Catalan soldier from Os de Balaguer, Spain, who led the 1769–70 overland expedition up the Pacific coast, founding San Diego and Monterey and serving as first governor of the Californias. Boneu Companys, an archivist in Lleida, worked outward from local and Spanish sources to reconstruct Portolá's family, early military career, and his later years in Puebla and Catalonia — the parts of the life that California historians had largely left dark. ¶ The book is as much a documentary collection as a narrative, printing translations of Portolá's own diary, the journal of the engineer Miguel Costansó, and a substantial body of correspondence. It revises the author's Spanish study of 1970, Don Gaspar de Portolá, descubridor y primer gobernador de California. | Explorers -- California -- Biography. Spain.
