Overseer of the Philippine Company and first factor of the Royal Philippine Company in China (1787-1796), Manuel de Agote y Bonaechea left us the testimony of his nautical-commercial wanderings along the waters and coasts of the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and mainly the Pacific between 1779 and 1798. As a crew member, passenger or factor of the Royal Philippine Company in Canton, in a series of diaries, some of them of navigation, he provides us with valuable information of a diverse nature, devoting ample space to news of a geographical nature.

He paid for the first statue of the navigator Elcano, erected in 1800 and destroyed in the siege of 1836. On the occasion of the unveiling of the statue, some verses were written in Basque, dedicated to Agote.