Julio studied Physical and Natural Sciences at the University of Valencia but abandoned these studies to sign up to the Army. He graduated from the Academy of Cavalry in 1875, aged 21, and from the Academy of Military Engineers at Guadalajara in 1882 at 26 years of age.
1877 found Julio traveling in Morocco, he published a book called Geografía militar de Marruecos (Military geography of Morocco) in 1884 in which he wrote his observations about the lay of the land from a military prospective. The Army commissioned him, in 1884, to explore this area once more and do a more in depth study. This he did and Expedicion geografico-militar al interior y costas de Marruecos (Expedition of a geographic-military man to the interior and coasts of Morocco) was published in 1885.
In the summer of 1886, under the sponsorship of the Sociedad Española de Geografía Comercial (Spanish Society of Commercial Geography), Julio, Felipe Rizzo (an Arabic interpreter), and biologist and meteorologist Francisco Quiroga Rodríguez, crossed the Spanish colony of Rio de Oro, part of Spanish Sahara, where they made topographical and astronomical observations in a land whose features were barely known at the time to geographers. They traversed the area between Cape Blanc and Cape Bojador, reaching Adrar after a journey of 900 km. It is considered the first scientific expedition in that part of the Sahara. They also signed the treaties of Idjil (near Atar) with the emir of Adrar and Saharawi chiefs.
Between 1888 and 1890, Julio served as Military attaché in the Spannish Embassy in Tangiers.
Juilos' work in Spanish Africa earned him the promotion of commander. However on December 19 1890 he published a criticism of the Spanish colonial government in Morocco in El Imparcial (The Impartial), and he was arrested. After being tried he was incarcerated in the Santa Bÿrbara Castle (at that time being used as a prison) on Mount Benacantil, Alicante, in 1891. He was released two years later.
During the Spanish-American War, Julio was Commander of Engineers in charge of the defense of the Guamaní, a peak that commanded the road between Cayey and Guayama, Puerto Rico. He was involved in the Battle of Guamaní (August 9, 1898), and was responsible for repulsing an attack by American troops there. (The Spanish-American War was a military conflict between Spain and the United States that began in April 1898. Hostilities halted in August of that year, and the Treaty of Paris was signed in December, giving the United States ownership of the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam.)
After the war he gained notoriety as the author of a pamphlet, La defensa de Puerto Rico (The defense of Puerto Rico), which supported Governor General Manuel Macías y Casado, who had become head of the government of Puerto Rico under the Autonomous Charter created in February 1898 (Puerto Rico soon passed under American control). Its purpose was to support the actions of General Macias before the Spanish public but it ended up criticising the Puerto Rican volunteers in the Spanish Army. After Spain's defeat against the United States, Spaniards looked for reasons to explain it. Julio wrote: "I have never seen such a servile, ungrateful country… in twenty-four hours, the people of Puerto Rico went from being fervently Spanish to enthusiastically American… they humiliated themselves, giving in to the invader as the slave bows to the powerful lord." A group of angry young Sanjuaneros (San Juan residents) challenged Julio to a duel, if the commander would not retract his pamphlet. The duel never took place, as Julio explained his intentions in writing the pamphlet, and the Sanjuaneros were satisfied with his reasons.
In mid 1899, with the blessing of the Spanish Army, Julio visited Marconis' radiotelegraphic installations in England and worked to develop his own system. He began collaborating with Marconi on resolving the problem of a wireless communication system, and had patents in his name by the end of 1899.
Research by professor Ángel Faus credits Baviera with inventing the radio in 1902 and patenting it in England, Germany, Belgium, and Spain. Thus, the inventor of radio was not Marconi, nor Telsa, Popov, Lodge, Fessenden, Hertz, Dolbear or any of the others, but rather a Spaniard, Julio Cervera Baviera! Marconi invented the wireless telegraph, demonstrating its effectiveness in December 1901, but did not produce radios until 1913. Faus points out that Julio, who worked with Marconi and his assistant George Kemp in 1899, resolved the difficulties of wireless telegraph and obtained his first patents prior to the end of that year.
On March 22 1902 Juio founded the Spanish Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Corporation in the presence of the Madrid notary Antonio Turón y Boscá. Julio brought to the Spanish Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Corporation the patents he had obtained in Spain, Belgium, Germany and England and established the second and third regular radiotelegraph service in the history of the world in 1901 and 1902 by maintaining regular transmissions between Tarifa and Ceuta for three consecutive months, and between Javea (Cabo de la Nao) and Ibiza (Cabo Pelado). This was after Marconi established the radiotelegraphic service between the Isle of Wight and Bournemouth in 1898.
In 1906, Domenico Mazzotto wrote: "In Spain the Minister of War has applied the system perfected by the commander of military engineering, Julio Cervera Baviera (English patent No. 20084 (1899))". Julio thus achieved some success in this field, but his radiotelegraphic activities ceased suddenly, the reasons for which are unclear.
Julio also worked as a technical instructor. He was appointed Royal Commissary at the Escuela Superior de Artes e Industrias de Madridon (Superior School of Arts and Industries of Madrid) on August 27, 1900. After 8 months, he became frustrated with his inability to reform the curriculum and traveled to Europe and the United States from May 1903, where he became interested in instruction via correspondence. He abandoned his military career, and set up the Internacional Institución Electrotécnica, in Valencia in 1903, one of the first long-distance education programs in the world. It gave degrees for the careers of Mechanical Engineer, Electrician, and Mechanic-Electrician.
Julio published his Enciclopedia científico-practica del ingeniero mecánico electricista (Encyclopedia of Scientific Practices for the Mechanical Engineer and Electrician), published in 2 editions; 1904 and 1915. The institution also published a magazine called Electricidad y Mecánica (Electricity and Mechanics). The institution later renamed itself the Institución de Enseñaza Técnica and offered a long-distance language learning program by phonograph.
Julio was also responsible for designing the original Tenerife Tram system and he helped build a tramway system in his native Segorbe.
Julio Cervera Baviera died in 1929, I have been unable to ascertain either date or location.