Francisco Coello de Portugal y Quesada ( 1822 - 1898)

Quesada was a Spanish cartographer and military officer and author of Atlas of Spain and its overseas possessions. He was one of the most outstanding cartographers in Spain in the 19th century. He retired from the Army with the rank of colonel.

Atlas of Spain and its overseas possessions On his return from Africa he continued to collaborate closely with Pascual Madoz and his famous Geographical-Statistical-Historical Dictionary of Spain and its overseas possessions , in which Coello dealt with cartography, published in a separate work entitled Atlas of Spain and his possessions de Ultramar , [ 18 ] which included maps of all the provinces of Spain at a scale of 1: 200,000. [ 14 ] Specifically, Francisco Coello and Pascual Madoz requested the Madrid City Council in 1847 the cartographic base of a plan of the city at a scale of 1: 1,250, completed in 1846 by the road engineers Merlo, Gutiérrez and Ribera – a project directed by Mesonero Romanos – to add it to the Atlas , in which they would finally include it with a scale 1: 5,000, [ 19 ] in 1849. [ 20 ] This map was later designated by the Madrid City Council as “Official Map of the Villa”. [ 20 ] The Atlas was the first work to reflect the new territorial division of the country in 1833