Junipero Serra

The Franciscan friar Fra Junipero Serra (1713-1784) was born Miguel Serra y Abram in Petra, Mallorca, and joined the order at the age of 16. His spiritual name Junipero means "juniper bush". He studied and preached in Palma de Mallorca. In 1747, he embarked on a missionary journey with a group of friars to Mexico and later to what is now California. As early as 1540, the Spanish variety Listán Prieto was introduced to Mexico by Franciscan fathers and called Misión there. Serra took cuttings from there and planted the first vineyard in California in 1769 - here it was now called Mission or Mission's Grape.

The monk can thus be considered the first Californian viticulture pioneer long before the Hungarian nobleman Agoston Haraszthy (1812-1869). The father subsequently founded around two dozen missions and monasteries in what is now the US state of California. Many of these later developed into such well-known cities as Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Santa Barbara. Junipero derived the names from altars in the church of the Convent of Saint Bernardin in Palma de Mallorca. He was beatified in 1988. His bust stands in the Capitol in the capital Washington D.C. amidst other famous historical figures of the USA. The picture in the middle shows the statue of Junípero Serra in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, the picture on the right a commemorative plaque at the parish church of Sant Pere in Petra on Mallorca.