NavList:

Rob van Gent, you wrote:
"The link with navigation may be the fact that, in 1757, Jorge Juan published the Compendio de navegación para el uso de los cavalleros Guardias Marinas, online here  [link]

Thanks. That makes sense. The Tratado de Navegacion by Mendoza y Rios was published thirty years later. Of course, navigation manuals in different navigation cultures sometimes fall victim to a common disease: a book is known by its earliest author, long dead and long since removed from its content. Hence American navigators read "Bowditch" and some still live under the illusion that "he" wrote it. Is there a Spanish equivalent?

You added:
"It is perhaps also useful to mention that, since 1791, the Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada published the Almanaque náutico y efemérides astronómicas, a Spanish version of the British Nautical Almanac."

That was after Jorge Juan had died, right? But, yes, interesting... I own a couple of copies of early 19th century editions of the almanaque náutico. I haven't found much that's worthy of note in them. They're what you would expect in that period and at least some of the astrononomical data appear to be directly copied from the British Nautical Almanac. I do wonder if they switched to their own computing teams soon after... maybe after the Peninsular War and the defeat of Napoleon... or earlier?

Following up on a clue in the "buying stuff" category :), I also found him on another bit of obsolete printed matter. A little more valuable than an old postage stamp, it was the 10,000 peseta currency note (bill). Image below, rotated to make most of the details vertical.

Frank Reed

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