Agustín de Betancourt was born in Puerto de la Orotava (today Puerto de la Cruz), in 1758, in the heart of a family belonging to the middle nobility and of enlightened tradition. He will portray himself, throughout his entire life, as an enlightened person possessed by firm convictions in progress, education and freedom.
Although his personal formation and ideology are rooted in the second half of the 18th century, the versatility of his creative inventiveness, his passion for machines and technology and his enormous projection as an organizer of public works, makes him a model of modern engineer, more proper of the 19th century.
His education is developed in a cult environment: his mother taught him French and his father some knowledge of science. Later he studied in La Orotava, at the Dominican convent as did Viera y Clavijo or the Iriarte Brothers. The former he knew since he was a boy in the enlightened Tertulia de Nava that, organized since 1765 by Tomás de Nava y Grimón, friend of Agustín’s father, represented the progressive and liberal spirit of the time. Spirit which will be continued by the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País of Tenerife, in which Agustín and two of his brothers participated.
Agustín was the second of eleven brothers, three of them died prematurely; with some of them he developed his inventive genius and carried out diverse works during his life. Thus, with his elder brother José, when Agustín was 18 years old, in 1776, and with several friends, they investigate the Cave of San Marcos at Icod de los Vinos. José wrote a document that gives an account of the excursion, Descripción de la Caverna que se halla al norte de la villa de Icod.
In 1777 and 1778 Agustín de Betancourt y Molina joined the provincial militias as a cadet and he graduated as an infantry lieutenant. At that time his brother José presented several studies to the Real Sociedad Económica of Tenerife: about silk looms, about the cultivation of mulberry trees, about several local crops, on the implantation of a printing press on the island, etc. Also his sister María, with whom he always had a special affective link, presented to the Económica an epicylindrical machine to braid silk, made in collaboration with Agustín.
On October 19th 1779, 20-year-old Agustín de Betancourt travelled to Madrid to continue his studies; he was recommended to the minister of Indies with certificates of gentlemanliness and nobility of the family. He never returned to the islands.
