Antonio Ponz

There he met Pedro Francisco Jiménez de Góngora y Luján, Duke of Almodovar, who would become Director of the Spanish Royal Academy of History (1792–1794) and formed a friendship with Anton Raphael Mengs.

Subsequently, Ponz published his famous Voyage around Spain (Viage de España), a collection of letters in which there is news of the most significant events worthy of knowing.

His description of them is strongly influenced by the Renaissance and Neoclassical movements and offer a much broader vision than other writers on many aspects of social reality in the country at the time, albeit with less detail than Eugenio Larruga.

In recognition of his work King Carlos III granted him the ecclesiastical revenues of the Stipend of Cuervo from the Archbishop of Toledo, and used his influence to have him appointed as the Secretary of the Academy of San Fernando (1776).

He also sampled the economic and social dynamism and political freedom of Britain, the intellectual and religious tolerance in the United Provinces and the bitter memories of the Spanish occupation of The Netherlands.

Although his work is concerned primarily with artistic description, it also includes reflections on the economy, as well as the social and religious life abroad, and, more darkly, the foreign policies in the territories visited.

Assigned to moderate reformism and no supporter of breaks, our author advocates the involvement of the nobility, through economic development and the patronage, in the progress of the country, while avoiding reference to sociability and everyday life.