Adolescence in the 19th century was wild. Francisco Coello was born one day in the spring of 1822 in Jaén and at the age of 11 he was already a cadet in the King's Infantry Regiment. At 13 he was a second lieutenant. At just 17, he was fighting on the front line of fire in the civil war of the liberals against the Carlists. And, at the age of 19, that young man who was already a military veteran received a titanic assignment: to prepare the Atlas of Spain and its overseas possessions. His team, made up of more than fifty people, traveled the country on horseback for more than three decades, making astronomical observations and using trigonometry to accurately measure distances. His was the first scientific map of Spain.
