Gabriel Cano de Aponte
Royal Governor of Chile
Gabriel Cano de Aponte (or Gabriel Cano y Aponte) was a Spanish soldier who served as Royal Governor of Chile from 1717 to 1733. His administration was the longest of all Colonial Governors and the second longest in the history of Chile after the administration of General Augusto Pinochet, who surpassed him by some eight months.
Life
Gabriel Cano was born in the town of Mora, near Toledo, the son of Juan Cano Ruiz and of Josefa de Aponte Carvajal. Cano joined the Spanish army and fought in Flanders for 33 years, rising through the ranks from Alférez to Brigadier and finally Marshal. He married María Campos, but she died in 1713 without descendants.
Due to his outstanding valor and performance during the War of the Spanish Succession he was promoted to Lieutenant General on 28 October 1715, three days later being appointed Royal Governor of Chile.
Mariá Francisca Vélaz de Medrano
On 5 January 1716 he married again, this time with María Francisca Velaz de Medrano Navarra y Puelles, in the city of Pamplona. María Francisca Vélaz de Medrano was 24 years old, while he was already in his fifties. She was the daughter of María de Larrea and José Vélaz de Medrano y Navarra, 4th Viscount of Azpa, Lord of Mendillori and the town of Autol. The marital agreements were formalized on January 5, 1716, with the bride's father contributing a dowry of 3,000 ducats, charged as an encumbrance on his entail, plus 4,000 pesos in jewelry.
“Gabriel Cano de Aponte” enters the record as royal Governor of Chile. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gabriel, Cano and Aponte can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gabriel Cano de Aponte” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.