Calle Domingo Fontán

A street dedicated to Domingo Fontán (1788-1866), the man who drew all of Galicia with his own footsteps. A mathematician and geographer born in the Pontevedra parish of Portas, he studied in Santiago and held the chair of Higher Mathematics there from 1814 to 1818. In November 1816 he began his life’s work: the Geometric Chart of Galicia. For seventeen years he crossed the territory measuring baselines, running triangulations and calculating heights with a barometer. He presented the result to the regent María Cristina in 1834, and the first print run did not reach Spanish soil until 1847. It is held to be the first physical map of Spain drawn with rigorous scientific methods. In 1835 he was named director of the Royal Astronomical Observatory of Madrid, and combined science with politics as member of parliament for Pontevedra. He died in Cuntis in 1866; more than a century later, his remains traveled to the Pantheon of Illustrious Galicians, in Santiago.