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This year marks two hundred years from the publication of the aspects astronomic, natural and political geography of Spain and Portugal by Don Isidoro de Antillón and Marzo.

This work, which appeared during drastic circumstances, is considered as the first book on modern geography in Spain and served as a model for subsequent works in which comparative statistics moved to hold an increasingly more significant role.

Its author was also one of the young promises of Spanish science who knew how to combine his scientific and teaching work (as he gave classes at the Royal Seminar of Noblemen to people such as the Duke of Rivas himself and whose untimely death led as a consequence to the delay in implementation of the project to prepare a reliable map of Spain, an essential basis for any statistical operation related in some way to the territory.

The fact that Isidoro de Antillón was a wise man who, in spite of his youth, enjoyed recognition by his peers, is highlighted by Manuel Godoy himself who, in his critical and apologetic memoirs, cites him many times, describing him as a man whose way of thanking somebody consisted of sacrificing his time and health in benefit of the homeland... he was the first who, in his speciality of astronomer and geographer, undertook geography and an excellent Atlas, the best we have in modern times... But he died poor and miserable in a jail.

For this new critical edition of these aspects of astronomic, natural and political geography of Spain and Portugal, the Spanish National Statistics Institute has decided to use the primitive and attractive format in eight used in the first edition of this work but this has been enriched with a series of etchings with views of cities, contemporary maps and statistical tables which will help the reader to situate themselves in a period considered by all historians as crucial to the history of Spain.