Early Career
Francisco Saavedra was born in Seville, Spain, in 1746, and trained as a doctor. He served alongside Bernardo de Gálvez in Spain's military campaign at Algiers in the 1770s, and through him changed career to work in Spain's Ministry of the Indies, principally as a financial planner. In 1780 he was sent to try to sort out the Spanish administration at Havana in Cuba, with the additional task of working alongside Gálvez once more, to retake Florida from British control. When the ship taking him to the Caribbean was captured by the British, Saavedra passed himself off as a merchant, and was allowed free movement within Jamaica (the British being completely unaware that just two years earlier he had been involved in planning for a future Spanish invasion of the island). He took the opportunity to find out all he could about Jamaica's ports, defences etc. A thoughtful and prescient man, he recorded in his diary in 1780:
“What is not being thought about at present, what ought to occupy the whole attention of politics, is the great upheaval that in time the North American revolution is going to produce in the human race.”
Read more about this topic: Francisco Saavedra De Sangronis
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