Why was Buenos Aires in Argentina founded twice?

Buenos Aires is founded, twice

Las dos fundaciones de Buenos Aires

1536–11 June 1580. Buenos Aires was founded twice.

Where: Río de la Plata, Argentina, Buenos Aires, Paraguay

What happened

Buenos Aires was founded twice. In 1536 Pedro de Mendoza's large expedition from Spain built a settlement on the Río de la Plata, but hunger and the resistance of the Querandí people defeated it and the survivors withdrew upriver to Asunción, in today's Paraguay, which became the real centre of Spanish settlement. In 1573 Juan de Garay set out from Asunción with about a hundred men, most of them born in America, and on 11 June 1580 refounded the 'Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Santa María del Buen Ayre' on the site of today's Plaza de Mayo, with a town council. The city grew slowly, often on contraband, until it became the capital of a new viceroyalty in 1776.

Say it

Buenos Aires se fundó dos veces: en 1536 y en 1580.

Buenos Aires was founded twice: in 1536 and in 1580.

Why it matters

Today's largest Spanish-speaking city in the southern hemisphere began as a failed camp; its Spanish, the voseo of the Río de la Plata, grew from this isolated frontier.

There today

See

The Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires is on the site where Juan de Garay refounded the city in 1580.

Read about it

• Una mudanza a Buenos Aires — Moving to Buenos Aires

Connected

• The Jesuit missions among the Guaraní (1609–1768)
• The Bourbon reforms (c. 1765–1788)

• After: The Jesuit missions among the Guaraní

Sources

1. 11 de junio: fundación de Buenos Aires — Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires
2. Historia de Buenos Aires — Turismo Buenos Aires, Gobierno de la Ciudad