Biography

Spanish (Aragonese) naturalist and priest, particularly well known for his botanical collections but also a successful geologist. Born in Darocence, Zaragoza, Miguel Fuertes Loren spent much of his life in the Dominican Republic where all of his collections were made. Trained as a priest, his primary vocation, he studied in several catholic colleges, particularly learning theology and philosophy. He was ordained in 1895 and first attached to the parish of Villafeliche, before moving to Lechón, both very near to his home town.

In 1898 he left Aragon for the New World, spending much of the following six years in Argentina with a short spell in Uruguay due to ill health. After a brief trip back to Spain to visit his family in 1905, Fuertes returned to settle in Peru where he lectured a course in mineralogy at the University of Lima. Before long he was on the move again and worked for several parishes in Panama and Cuba before finally settling for good in the Dominican Republic in 1909.

While parish priest for the town of Barahona, it was here that he flourished as a scientist, collecting specimens with Dr. Ignatz Urban throughout the region and, in 1912, scaling the summit of Pico Loma Rucilla. Through Urban, Fuertes sent his own specimens to a great number of herbaria in Europe and America where they were then studied. His collections were particularly important, so much so that there are now 35 species which bare his name (from 25 different families) as well as the genera Fuertesia Urban and Fuertesiella Schlechter, which honour his contributions to the field of botany. His geological discoveries include a large copper seam, a vast magnesium deposit and a thermal vent found whilst on an expedition to Bahoruco.

In 1926 he left the parish for the capital, Santo Domingo, because of his diminishing health, and died in the same city after a matter of months. In 1978 B. Vega and P. Troncoso Sánchez published a Catálogo de Plantas Colectadas por el Padre Fuertes and a street in Barahona is also named after him.

Sources:
J. Fuertes Marcuello, 1990, "El Naturalista Aragonés Miguel Fuertes Loren", Boletín de la Real Sociedad Española de Historia Natural (Actas), 86: 17-23.