Alejandro Malaspina

Alejandro Malaspina (1754–1810), born at Mulazzo in Tuscany, was a Spanish naval officer and explorer. He joined the Spanish fleet in 1774 and circumnavigated the world on a royal commission in 1786–1788.

From 1789 to 1794 he led the Malaspina Expedition, surveying the American Pacific coast from Cape Horn to the Gulf of Alaska and crossing to the Philippines and Australia. His criticism of colonial rule and a plot against Manuel Godoy led to his arrest in 1795 and imprisonment; freed and exiled to Italy in 1802, he died in 1810.