The Mallorcan who was president of Texas
The novel-like life of revolutionary Joan Picornell, on the 200th anniversary of his death in Cuba.
PalmA magistrate who prosecuted him declared that "his strange life is truly an extraordinary novel." And then, his exceptional career had barely begun: he was a renovator of education, a liberal revolutionary, and a fighter for the independence of the American colonies, to the point of being proclaimed president of a proposed republic of Texas. Two centuries after his death in Cuba, in the first days of September 1825, we remember Joan Picornell, who declared that "ignorance is the greatest evil of a people."
Joan Baptista Picornell Gomila was born in Palma in 1759. His family must have been fairly well-off, as he received a good education. Higher education was available in Mallorca at that time, so it seems he may have begun his studies at home, although he continued them at the prestigious University of Salamanca.
In the classrooms of Salamanca he met José Marchena, Abbot Marchena, with very advanced ideas, and with other notable figures of the time. At that time, the proposals of the Enlightenment, based on reason and progress, were spreading throughout Europe. Even at the court of Madrid, they were viewed with a certain sympathy, which turned to panic when those ideas inspired the French Revolution years later.
The young Mallorcan married Feliciana Obispo in 1780. In 1782, they had a son, Juan Antonio. A description of Picornell from those years has come down to us: "Some smallpox spots and a half-drooping eye gave him an intimidating air, reinforced by his hunched back, his raspy voice, and his rushed, violent speech, with a Mallorcan accent."
At that time, Picornell was preoccupied with a radical renewal of pedagogy, and he used his son as a guinea pig. At just three years old, he gave him an hour-and-a-half exam at the same university in Salamanca, with more than 300 questions on theology, history, and geography, which young Juan Antonio was able to answer correctly, astonishing those present.
Encouraged by the success of that experience, Picornell set himself an even more ambitious challenge. He proposed to the then strongman of the Spanish government, the Count of Floridablanca, a project for the State to take over education. This, which now seems like the logical thing to do, was revolutionary at the time. Picornell also proposed banishing corporal punishment for students—the saying "a letter enters with blood."
The Conspiracy of Saint Blaise
Floridablanca submitted the proposal to a kind of sanhedrin of scholars: the Society of Friends of the Country, which rejected it. Particularly belligerent was Francisco Cabarrús—founder of the Bank of San Carlos, the current Bank of Spain—who refused to even allow Picornell to read his plan, arguing that reforming education in Spain was impossible.
As compensation, Picornell was commissioned to make a series of trips around the Peninsula to report on the state of agriculture. In his free time, he learned physics, chemistry, medicine, English, and French. As all this was still not enough for his hyperactivity, he also implemented improvements in tile making and hat dyeing.
Those journeys through a miserable Spain, plus the frustration of seeing his educational plan rejected, probably contributed to radicalizing Picornell's positions. He then approached the Freemasons. And not just any Masons, but those who followed Giuseppe Balsamo, known as the Count of Cagliostro, perhaps the biggest loudmouth of all time, who claimed to have traveled through time for three thousand years.
Thus, Picornell became the "mastermind" of the San Blas conspiracy, the first liberal revolution in the history of Spain, which was to break out in Madrid on February 3 (San Blai), 1795, to establish a constitutional monarchy. Picornell set up shop in a tavern in the Lavapiés neighborhood, under a false name, and distributed donations to the neighbors to attract them. He had weapons and proclamations ready. One slogan of that revolt was "Down with bad government!" Exactly the same as the Mallorcan Germania three centuries earlier.
It was unlikely that, with so many people involved, no one would be left out. Indeed, two artisans told a priest. The power-Church alliance worked like clockwork, and the conspirators, Picornell among them, were imprisoned. Not even this stopped the Mallorcan: he led a prison riot. His son Juan Antonio, who was already a teenager, was placed in a hospice, forbidden from studying literature, lest he end up like his father. Fortunately, a few years later, he and his mother were allowed to move to Mallorca, where his brother-in-law, Lluc Picornell, took them in.
The instigators of the Sant Blai riots were sentenced to death. But the strongman of the moment, Manuel Godoy—unpopular, but not foolish—reasoned that these executions would only make things worse and further inflame the streets. Or perhaps the French authorities, who might have been behind it, interceded on their behalf.
In this way, Picornell and company were taken as prisoners to La Guaira, Venezuela. The Mallorcan not only managed to escape, but also joined a new conspiracy, that of Manuel Gual and José María España in 1797, which sought to proclaim the independence of that colony. Gual was the son of a Mallorcan, Mateu Gual, who was also the brother-in-law of Sucre, one of the main leaders of the independence movement in the colonies. His nephew, Pedro Gual, would later become president of Venezuela.
The Pirates of Barataria
That other revolt was also a failure. José María España was executed, Manuel Gual died of poisoning, and Picornell traveled back and forth across the Americas until he ended up in the United States, then the only territory that had already achieved independence. Between trips, he translated the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen that had been drafted by the French revolutionary assembly. The captain general of Venezuela prohibited the possession of copies of the Declaration, under penalty of flogging, imprisonment, or death.
The Mallorcan revolutionary took refuge in France, where Napoleon had just proclaimed himself emperor, apparently with the idea of resuming his medical studies. The Spanish government demanded his extradition from the Minister of Police, the fearsome Joseph Fouché, but he didn't lift a finger.
The outbreak of the French War isolated the Spanish metropolis from its American colonies, where it rekindled the flame of independence. Picornell returned to Venezuela and joined the new revolutionary government, headed by Francisco Miranda, who appointed him to a curious position: chief of the Caracas Local Police. But the Spanish regained their power, and Picornell settled again in the United States.
Around 1812—at the age of 53—Picornell experienced his last revolutionary adventure, and perhaps the most surreal of all: an expedition to Texas, then under Spanish rule, to proclaim its independence. His traveling companions could hardly have been more unusual: the Cuban José Álvarez de Toledo, of illustrious aristocratic lineage but a supporter of self-determination for the colonies; the Napoleonic soldier Jean Humbert; and the pirate brothers Jean and Pierre Lafitte. The latter had established their own kingdom near New Orleans, which they named Barataria – Sancho Panza's apple in Don Quixote: they were pirates, but letter-wounded pirates.
Picornell and his "gang", as they referred to them, proclaimed a provisional government of the Interior Provinces of Mexico –Texas–, of which the Mallorcan was designated president. Román Piña described his election as an "operetta": in the presence of two thousand soldiers and the indigenous people of the area, amazed by that spectacle, he carried out that spectacle, he carried out that spectacle, he carried out that spectacle. The proclamation of the Mallorcan was unanimously published in The Texas Gazette, published with a printing press that Picornell himself had brought from Philadelphia.
Of course, that umpteenth adventure also went wrong. The Spanish troops defeated them. Picornell still continued to search for resources in New Orleans to resume the fight, but Humbert and Álvarez de Toledo quarreled among themselves. Texas would have to wait.
After the Texan adventure, Picornell was 55 years old—an advanced age for the time—and perhaps tired and disillusioned. At that moment, friar Antonio de Sedella sprang into action, assuring the colonial authorities that he would succeed in making the Majorcan "a traitor to his own cause."
Sedella's brainwashing worked. In a letter dated July 2, 1814, in New Orleans, the old revolutionary addressed the ill-fated Ferdinand VII, newly seated on the Spanish throne after Napoleon's defeat, begging for clemency. According to Picornell, the San Blas conspiracy had been directed solely against Godoy, whom Ferran hated to death. He, Picornell, had, in reality, been a victim of circumstance and had never intended anything more than "to do good for humanity." Picornell not only obtained a pardon, but also went on to serve the enemy.
He was placed under the command of the Spanish vice-consul in New Orleans, as a kind of agent of the crown.
Joan Picornell died in Cuba (San Fernando de Nuevitas) at the age of 66, in early September 1825, two hundred years ago. All he left behind was a pile of books. A widower, he had remarried Celeste Villabaso, with whom he had no children and from whom he had separated. His son, Juan Antonio, died before him.
Did he definitively renounce his ideals? It's not entirely clear. Perhaps he still dreamed of the liberal revolution and the independence of the colonies. Teo Cabanes points out that "the revolutionary work" he had sown in Cuba would eventually bear fruit four decades later, with the 1868 war against the Spanish Empire. If so, it would have been a battle fought by Picornell after his death.
Information prepared from texts by Antoni Marimon Riutort, Román Piña Homs, Antonio Astorgano, Pedro de Montaner, and Teo Cabanes Martín, with the collaboration of Joan Mayol.