[1] He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and accompanied his mentor, Jerónimo Antonio Gil, to New Spain at age seventeen.
[1] Despite his wife's strenuous objections,[1] Suria agreed to join the Malaspina Expedition and successfully negotiated the maintenance of his salary, travel expenses, suitable lodgings, and continuance of his seniority when he returned to work.
Other members of the Malaspina expedition included chief scientist Antonio Piñeda, the French-born botanist Luis Née, and naturalist Thaddäus Haenke from Prague.
The two astronomers, Ciriaco Zevallos and José Espinosa y Tello, are immortalized in the places names for the Vancouver Island town of Zeballos and the nearby Espinoza Inlet.
Cardero, known as Little Pepe, showed increasing skill, but Malaspina wrote to the Viceroyalty in Mexico City, requesting two more artists to be sent from Spain.
He told us that he had been destined to be a victim and to be eaten by Chief Macuina together with many others, and that this custom was practiced with the younger prisoners of war, as well as in the ceremonies which were used in such a detestable and horrible sacrifice."
After completing his service in Nootka Sound with the Catalan Volunteers in New Spain, Alberni became interim governor of California, where he died in 1803.