Don Diego Flores de Valdés, also spelled Diego Flórez de Valdés or Diego Flores de Valdez (c. 1530-1595) was an obscure and sometimes controversial Spanish naval officer and explorer. He was born in the small village of Las Morteras in Asturias, Spain in the early 1530s, and joined the Spanish Navy in 1550. He initially worked in a ship supplying the Spanish Army in the Netherlands and in 1554, he was part of the crew that transported the future King Philip II of Spain to England for his marriage to Mary I. He also served in the campaign that destroyed the Huguenot settlements in Florida and was one of the officers under Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa during his ill-fated attempt to colonize Tierra del Fuego. Gamboa claimed that Flores de Valdés was the sole responsible for the expedition's fai