The San Agustín de Talca Foundation was on May 12, 1742, who ordered its foundation was the Royal Governor of Chile, José Antonio Manso de Velasco and later named City of Talca on June 6, 1796, a real identity document of Carlos IV of Spain, the Royal Governor of Chile, Ambrosio O'Higgins and the Corregidor of Talca, Vicente de la Cruz y Bahamonde.
Origin
The 14-year period that separates the Curalaba disaster (December 23, 1598) and the defensive war (May 26, 1612) is the most violent that records the history of Chile and, in some way, the most momentous of the Spanish colonies In five years, the seven cities located south of the Biobío: Santa Cruz de Oñez, Arauco, Angol, La Imperial, Valdivia, Osorno and Villarrica disappeared from the Mapuche or were abandoned by the Spaniards. The extensive area designed by Pedro de Valdivia, and which had formed as the national nucleus of the new country; These Chilean lands were lost as an active element in their development for more than two centuries. Thousands of Spaniards perished in this company and more than four hundred women, Spanish and mestizo children, captured by the victors, propped up with their blood the growing vitality of the Mapuche people and the other half of the separated territory went through a long moral crisis. That came with increasing misery to test the feeling of survival. . Of these Spanish troops under the command of Governor Alonso de Ribera (he arrived at February 11, 1601 to the Arauco War and died in Concepcion in 1617), Captain Don Gil de Vilches y Aragón served. This young man came to the Arauco war in 1598 at 17 years of age, is a native of the city of Baeza, born in 1581, was the son of Juan de Vilches y Collados and Doña María de Aragón, both with proven nobility.
The historian Don Diego de Rosales quotes him:
In 1609, when he was 28, he had a good situation for his services as captain, and he was awarded the following grant dated August 18, 1609, where he says:
He married Mrs. Isabel de Mendoza y Valdivia, of which he had no succession, but continued his last name with natural children. He held the position of corregidor of the Maule party from 1632 to 1634. In 1641, at the age of 60, he authorized his wife to carry out tests, appointed his universal heiress and that after his days, they passed their properties to the Augustinian community, with the following condition:
Captain Don Gil de Vilches y Aragón is considered the first Spanish settled with all the properties in the lands of Talcamo, later called Talca. His widow Doña Isabel de Mendoza y Valdivia, in his last years of life was a nun in the convent of Las Agustinas de Santiago. On July 3, 1651, as a novice nun, the secretary appeared and ordered an Augustinian convent founded in his stay in Talca. After the general uprising of February 1655 in the Arauco War, the Spaniards sought refuge on the north bank of the Maule River, where camps and moats were built in these lands of the Order of San Agustín. This fact could be considered as the first attempt at foundation. Successive attempts of foundation were made as a refuge for the Spaniards of the Arauco war, without any results.
It is considered that the first attempt of foundation is of the governor Tomás Marín González de Poveda in 1692, at the confluence of the Baeza and Piduco rivers, where he drew streets and squares. Inadequate and agriculturally poor land, so their settlement disappeared.
Foundation of San Agustín de Talca
In the house and place that belonged to the widow Isabel de Mendoza y Valdivia, it was the center of a large part of the Maule district. The farmers of Cauquenes, Purapel, Loncomilla and Putagán, Rauquén, Huenchullami, Vichuquén, went there to their religious practices. The Augustinian Order had been installed since 1651. This formed the political and development center of the Maule party, where militias and good government gathered there.
José Antonio Manso de Velasco was instructed to found between the city of Quillota and the Biobío River, a city at the headquarters of Talcamo. This was the third time that the royal authority was going to work on this task, after the failed attempts of 1655 and 1692.
The Governor of the Kingdom José Antonio Manso de Velasco arrived in Maule on May 12, 1742, the date of his founding act.
This place should be the center of the new foundation, its main square, where its streets would be.
Final settlement in the villa
Governor Manso de Velasco appointed Mr. Mauricio de Morales as an advisor to the corrector of Baeza, with the power to replace him. The governor gave Baeza the instructions that he should stick to the new foundation, these were: