IF YOU'RE in the Comunidad Valenciana any time between now and the early hours of March 20, you may notice an awful lot of noise and colour on the streets. It's the season for the region's biggest festival,...
That epic world tour, 500 years on: When Spain became a global trailblazer
07/09/2022
ROUND-THE-WORLD cruises are a typical 'retirement' dream, although flights following the same course generate less enthusiasm – getting from one side of the planet to the other can take over two days, allowing for stops and, although Qantas Airlines successfully trialled a non-stop London Heathrow-Sydney connection four years ago, the thought of 17 hours confined to the same seating area is not usually an appetising one. Even if you happen to love airline food and frequently ask your neighbouring passengers if you can pinch their leftovers.
On that basis, if ever a complete round-the-world direct flight were to be launched – although it's hard to see what its purpose would be, given that it's basically a long-winded way of getting from departures to arrivals at the same airport, when you could just as easily take the lift and achieve it in 10 minutes – it would likely take around 34 or 35 hours; if you set off at 07.00 on Saturday morning, you'd arrive at the opposite end of the terminal you left at 17.00 or 18.00 on Sunday.
Whizz back 10 or 12 generations, and the mere idea would have been as improbable as a short-haul passenger space flight to the next galaxy for a weekend away would today – and the opposite side of our planet was as much an unknown quantity as the nearest inhabited world outside the Milky Way still is in the early 21st century.
So the fact Spain and Portugal lifted the lid from all that should have made both countries more famous as travel pioneers than they were.
After all, look at the furore created around the globe by the moon landings – just imagine if they had had television 500 years ago.
Exactly 500 years ago, this week, that is. It was when the first ship ever to sail the full circumference of Earth returned to port – and it turns out there's still new information about the feat coming to light.
Spicing up global trade: There must be another way...
It's hardly necessary to say the voyage of the Victoria was one of the greatest feats of marine navigation of all time. And you've probably already guessed that very few of the original crew would cross the finishing line – just 18 of the 245 who set off on August 10, 1519 from the river port in Sevilla would make it back there on September 6, 1522.
In fact, the Nao, or ship, known as the Victoria was one of a fleet of five Royal Navy vessels sent out on the same mission, and the only one that came back.
All together, they were known as the 'Spice-Rack Army', or Armada de la Especiería, and their planned route would not only involve unchartered waters, but tens of thousands of kilometres that did not even appear on the map.
The crew had been instructed by the Crown to head west out of Spain and seek a path to the Moluccas islands, part of what is now eastern Indonesia, via the newly-discovered Americas.
The Maluku Islands, or Moluccas, were famed for their spices and, therefore, a lucrative source of trading goods, but had only so far been reached from the east – across Europe and Asia.
Given that Columbus' voyage in 1492 had been westbound and his expected destination India – nobody in Europe realised the American continent existed and sat right in the way – the five-ship 'spice' fleet was going to try again, and see if Asia really was beyond the bits Spain had recently colonised or whether they would just get to the edge of a Terry Pratchett-style Discworld which ended in a giant waterfall gushing down into outer space.
(Obviously, Terry Pratchett and outer space hadn't been invented yet, but you get the picture).
Name-dropping in Antarctic seas...and meeting Bigfoot
Portuguese mariner Fernão Magalhães – referred to in the Spanish history books as 'Fernando' or 'Hernando' and his surname as 'Magallanes' – captained the fleet, which would go on to cross three oceans, circulate three continents, and take three years.
Nearly eight months would pass before the ships reached the Argentine Patagonia, where rebellion broke out among the Victoria's crew against Magalhães, led by its captain, Luis de Mendoza, and ending in the latter's violent death.
Magalhães seized control of the Victoria, the Santiago and the Trinidad, forcing the San Antonio to return to Sevilla.
The Nao Santiago crashed into the rocks in the river Santa Cruz off the Chilean coast, putting it out of action, although those on board survived and dispersed among the crew on the remaining three.
The Victoria, the Concepción and the Trinidad had, indeed, found their gateway to Asia via the Americas – around Cape Horn, the southernmost limits of Chile and Argentina and the last continental land before the Antarctic, a passage between the mainland and Tierra del Fuego island that was later named the Strait of Magellan, or Estrecho de Magallanes.
It sits within Chile's most southerly region, called 'Antarctic Chile', and provides a short-cut when sailing around the Horn, slicing through the tip of the continent with Tierra del Fuego to the south; it's no way as dangerous, long or exposed as that Bermuda Triangle of seas, the Drake Passage, between Chile and the South Pole, but still presents some very tricky narrow bits, unpredictable winds – sometimes gale-force - sudden high tides, icebergs, and freezing water and air temperatures.
You can now only pass through it when guided by a professional, specialist maritime pilot, a sailor with superior navigation skills whose job it is to get boats through the most difficult of the world's sea passages.
Magalhães gave Tierra del Fuego island its name, too: He called it 'Land of Fire' after seeing clouds of smoke coming up from aborigines' bonfires, fuelled by huge quantities of natural gas beneath the surface, which they were using to perform their rituals.
He was also responsible for the Patagonia getting its title, after he first sighted the white-haired natives, of huge stature and incredible height – Magalhães and his team barely reached their waists, according to reports of the voyage – and massive feet, the captain dubbed them patagão, or 'bigfoot'.
In other words, 'Patagonia' more or less translates as 'bigfoot land'.
These days, you can avoid it altogether just by popping through the Panamá Canal, but that wouldn't be open for a while yet. Not for another 395 years after the Victoria and her companions left Sevilla.
What time is it in the Marshall Islands, and where can you find 11,000 virgins?
In addition to a new route to the Moluccas – and returning with the Victoria's hull bursting with spices – the voyage led to numerous discoveries, revelations that would change the way the entire planet operated, traded, travelled and lived.
Firstly, and although half a millennium on there's a huge movement which refutes the fact and is determined to prove otherwise, the world is a ball, not a disc, and the Victoria crew saw this for themselves.
In doing so, they 'discovered' time zones, collated pages and pages of cosmographic and nautical data which would be used for the next five centuries by every nation in Europe, and 'found' the Marianas Islands (now US-owned and split between Guam in the south and the Northern Mariana Islands at the top), the Marshall Islands, and the outer islands of the Philippines.
Leaving behind what, at the time, Magalhães dubbed the 'Cape of 11,000 Virgins' via the 'All Hallows Strait' – because of its being November 1, or All Saints' Day – the crew climbed the coast of Chile, becoming the first-ever Europeans to see the western side of the American continent, reaching a massive body of water with no sign of land in any direction.
What they dubbed 'the Pacific Ocean' – or 'Peaceful Ocean', a serious misnomer - would take exactly 99 days to cross before they hit the coast on the other side.
Murder, betrayal, and a dinner invitation they should have turned down
Now in the Philippines, having lost a few more of the crew through repeat rebellion and betrayal and many more through illness due to the extremely primitive conditions on board ship that were par for the course in the early 16th century, Magalhães, too, would perish – this time at the hands of a huge indigenous tribe.
Down to just 48 crew, all self-proclaimed Christians, they met their match against the 1,500 Muslim aborigines and their powerful tribe leader Lapu-Lapu, who objected to the King of Spain being sovereign governor and owner of their territory.
Magalhães was murdered by the tribes on Mactan Island, just off the shores of Cebu Island and opposite that of Bohol.
After his second in command, Duarte Barbosa, was betrayed by the people of Cebu – he and other crew were invited by the island governor to a banquet, and then all assassinated during dinner – the Basque mariner Juan Sebastián Elcano del Puerto was named captain of the mission.
And Lapu-Lapu's name would be given to a town on Cebu, still called as such today.
Elcano and 17 other crew lived long enough to circumnavigate the African continent via the Cape of Good Hope and then head north to Spain, reaching the sea port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz province, on September 6, 1522.
By that time, the Trinidad had become so badly deteriorated by catastrophic storms and tides that she had sunk off the Moluccas Islands, and the Concepción had nobody left to captain it after the Philippine massacre, leading the remaining crew to dismantle it and burn it.
Despite all the shipwrecks and the cost of keeping 245 people on board for over three years – even though only 18 made it home – the cargo of spices and the sale proceeds from it back in Spain meant the mission had netted a massive profit.
It would lead to trade routes opening between the Americas and Asia, and between Europe and Asia via the Americas, including a particularly lucrative and long-running commercial passage between México and the Philippines, as well as the gradual colonisation of the various island nations in the Pacific.
All change after 500 years: Author discovers alternative history
Just as we thought we knew at least the outline of the round-the-world Victoria tale – which would be the last complete tour of the globe for over 60 years, until Sir Francis Drake achieved it – along comes an historian who digs deeper and changes the names, places and dates.
Ramón Jiménez Fraile, former international news correspondent for EFE in Brussels, reporter for El Correo until the 1980s, and now media boss in the European Union, member of the Spanish Geographical Society – which has published countless of his articles – and author of numerous books about ancient explorers, has just released his latest work in time for the 500-year anniversary of the first-ever global circumnavigation.
And in it, he tells us that September 6, 1522 was not, in fact, the date we should be commemorating.
The Victoria crossed its own path, opposite the coast of Sénégal, on June 29 that year, so we've already missed the 500th birthday of the ship's return.
This would also mean that, instead of 18 crew on board – Elcano plus his 17 men – there were around 30 or so, since nearly half of those on the ship perished between west Africa and southern Spain.
And in any case, it wasn't 18 men, says Fraile, but 21: As well as Elcano and his 17, the expedition kidnapped and boarded 13 aborigines from the Molucca Islands, of whom three had survived by the time they docked in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
Whether these three indigenous peoples would go on to marry, have children, or even live much beyond their arrival in Spain, is not known; if so, the direct descendants of 16th-century Indonesian slaves might well still be out there among the nation's current 47 million inhabitants.
But Elcano only informed Emperor Carlos V of the 18 crew, himself included.
And he wasn't called Elcano, says Fraile: He was known at home, in the Basque Country, as ‘Elkano' and documented elsewhere as 'Delcano' – although the latter is likely to be a contraction of 'de Elcano'. The preposition meaning 'of' or 'from' was normally tacked onto the beginning of a word if it started with a vowel, back in Mediaeval and Renaissance Spain.
Little doubt has been cast on the name of Magalhães, or Magallanes to the Spanish State he swore allegiance to before taking the helm of five of its ships, although Fraile has unearthed fascinating information about his family origins, which the 'Spice Army' captain endeavoured to keep as hidden as possible.
He was a descendant of the Portuguese Pimentel line, a family considered traitors in their native country for having moved to the neighbouring Kingdom of Castilla – now the western half of mainland Spain.
And although Magalhães was one of the Christian front who – unsuccessfully – faced up to the 1,500-strong Muslim tribe off Cebu Island in the Philippines, his mother's surname was Mezquita.
This translates as 'mosque', and was reserved for the Moors, or northern African Arabs, who converted to Christianity to avoid being thrown out of Spain, imprisoned, tortured, killed or all four during the Inquisition.
So Magalhães was, in fact, of Muslim roots, according to Fraile's research.
Which only leaves the Victoria, and surely we can't have got that bit wrong – as well as being a human female name, it translates from Spanish to 'victory', so there's little margin for misinformation, isn't there?
Actually, not: She came from the Basque Country, from the fishing village of Ondarroa in the province of Vizcaya – the capital of which is Bilbao – and, according to local resident Pedro de Arizmendi, belonged to his father, Domingo de Apallua, until the King expropriated it against the family's will.
They had called her the Santa María, but Magalhães' swearing of allegiance to the Spanish flag and to King Carlos I on February 7, 1518 took place at the Convent of the Virgen de Victoria, or 'Virgin of Victory', inside its chapel, in the Triana district of Sevilla.
The ship was renamed after her – and, curiously, it was the Catholic calendar saint's day for the 'Virgin of Victory' two days after she reached Sanlúcar, so Elcano and crew paid a visit to her statue to thank her for taking care of them.
But Fraile's research seems to show that the vessel was always known by the Basque translation of Victoria, so her real title was Vitoria, the same name as the city that's capital of the region's land-locked province of Álava.
The ship has long been thought to have sunk out to sea within a few years of her epic voyage, but Fraile has unearthed documents that seem to show she was dismantled in Sevilla dockyard in 1580, for the wood she was made from to be used to build other vessels.
All this, and more, is apparently revealed in Fraile's latest publication, Magallanes' Vitoria: The Unseen Side of the First Round-the-World Voyage (La Vitoria de Magallanes: El Lado Insólito de la Primera Vuelta al Mundo).
Where's the Vi(c)toria Nao?
Whether or not the two reported fates of the now-famous vessel are true, you might have suspected that a wooden ship built in the early 16th century would be unlikely to survive until the early 21st. But you can still climb on board the Nao Victoria if you want to get a real feel for how Elcano, Magalhães and friends (or foes) lived, worked, rebelled, betrayed, murdered, and generally spent their three years – or less – covering 32,000 miles of ocean.
To mark the 470th anniversary and the 'Expo', or world exhibition, coming to Sevilla, a replica was built in 1992 – and has already followed Magalhães' and Elcano's route several times.
She did a complete world tour in one hit on two occasions, in 2004 and 2006, the first time a craft of this type had ever done so – effectively, a ship of 16th-century design, but made with stronger materials, such as treated, solid wood.
And the 26-metre (85'4”) craft has been around the globe many a time since, but with frequent stops.
It has parked up for anything from a couple of days to a week at a time in numerous ports around Europe and the USA, often several in the same country.
The ship was in Dénia (northern Alicante province) in mid-October 2021, and again at the end of April 2022, and was open to anyone who wanted to explore this floating museum for the nominal ticket fee of €5, or €3 for children aged five to 10 (under-fives get in free).
Whenever she's due in your nearest port – and the Victoria, or Vitoria, tends to make repeat stops in the same ones over the years – you can either buy your entries online to beat the queues, or pick them up at the entrance.
She was stationed in Sanlúcar over September 2-5, and is now due to remain in Sevilla from September 8-11.
Her next stops are not known as yet, and are usually only advertised at short notice - so, if you find out the ship has dropped anchor in your area, it's best to seize the opportunity there and then.
The Nao Victoria Foundation (Fundación Nao Victoria) also manages tickets for and events involving other famous craft, such as Torrevieja's S-61 Delfín submarine, and replicas, like that of Columbus' Santa María, and of a 17th-century galleon just like those used to transport cargoes of beeswax, silk and porcelain from China to México via the Philippines.
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ROUND-THE-WORLD cruises are a typical 'retirement' dream, although flights following the same course generate less enthusiasm – getting from one side of the planet to the other can take over two days, allowing for stops and, although Qantas Airlines successfully trialled a non-stop London Heathrow-Sydney connection four years ago, the thought of 17 hours confined to the same seating area is not usually an appetising one. Even if you happen to love airline food and frequently ask your neighbouring passengers if you can pinch their leftovers.
On that basis, if ever a complete round-the-world direct flight were to be launched – although it's hard to see what its purpose would be, given that it's basically a long-winded way of getting from departures to arrivals at the same airport, when you could just as easily take the lift and achieve it in 10 minutes – it would likely take around 34 or 35 hours; if you set off at 07.00 on Saturday morning, you'd arrive at the opposite end of the terminal you left at 17.00 or 18.00 on Sunday.
Whizz back 10 or 12 generations, and the mere idea would have been as improbable as a short-haul passenger space flight to the next galaxy for a weekend away would today – and the opposite side of our planet was as much an unknown quantity as the nearest inhabited world outside the Milky Way still is in the early 21st century.
So the fact Spain and Portugal lifted the lid from all that should have made both countries more famous as travel pioneers than they were.
After all, look at the furore created around the globe by the moon landings – just imagine if they had had television 500 years ago.
Exactly 500 years ago, this week, that is. It was when the first ship ever to sail the full circumference of Earth returned to port – and it turns out there's still new information about the feat coming to light.
Spicing up global trade: There must be another way...
It's hardly necessary to say the voyage of the Victoria was one of the greatest feats of marine navigation of all time. And you've probably already guessed that very few of the original crew would cross the finishing line – just 18 of the 245 who set off on August 10, 1519 from the river port in Sevilla would make it back there on September 6, 1522.
In fact, the Nao, or ship, known as the Victoria was one of a fleet of five Royal Navy vessels sent out on the same mission, and the only one that came back.
All together, they were known as the 'Spice-Rack Army', or Armada de la Especiería, and their planned route would not only involve unchartered waters, but tens of thousands of kilometres that did not even appear on the map.
The crew had been instructed by the Crown to head west out of Spain and seek a path to the Moluccas islands, part of what is now eastern Indonesia, via the newly-discovered Americas.
The Maluku Islands, or Moluccas, were famed for their spices and, therefore, a lucrative source of trading goods, but had only so far been reached from the east – across Europe and Asia.
Given that Columbus' voyage in 1492 had been westbound and his expected destination India – nobody in Europe realised the American continent existed and sat right in the way – the five-ship 'spice' fleet was going to try again, and see if Asia really was beyond the bits Spain had recently colonised or whether they would just get to the edge of a Terry Pratchett-style Discworld which ended in a giant waterfall gushing down into outer space.
(Obviously, Terry Pratchett and outer space hadn't been invented yet, but you get the picture).
Name-dropping in Antarctic seas...and meeting Bigfoot
Portuguese mariner Fernão Magalhães – referred to in the Spanish history books as 'Fernando' or 'Hernando' and his surname as 'Magallanes' – captained the fleet, which would go on to cross three oceans, circulate three continents, and take three years.
Nearly eight months would pass before the ships reached the Argentine Patagonia, where rebellion broke out among the Victoria's crew against Magalhães, led by its captain, Luis de Mendoza, and ending in the latter's violent death.
Magalhães seized control of the Victoria, the Santiago and the Trinidad, forcing the San Antonio to return to Sevilla.
The Nao Santiago crashed into the rocks in the river Santa Cruz off the Chilean coast, putting it out of action, although those on board survived and dispersed among the crew on the remaining three.
The Victoria, the Concepción and the Trinidad had, indeed, found their gateway to Asia via the Americas – around Cape Horn, the southernmost limits of Chile and Argentina and the last continental land before the Antarctic, a passage between the mainland and Tierra del Fuego island that was later named the Strait of Magellan, or Estrecho de Magallanes.
It sits within Chile's most southerly region, called 'Antarctic Chile', and provides a short-cut when sailing around the Horn, slicing through the tip of the continent with Tierra del Fuego to the south; it's no way as dangerous, long or exposed as that Bermuda Triangle of seas, the Drake Passage, between Chile and the South Pole, but still presents some very tricky narrow bits, unpredictable winds – sometimes gale-force - sudden high tides, icebergs, and freezing water and air temperatures.
You can now only pass through it when guided by a professional, specialist maritime pilot, a sailor with superior navigation skills whose job it is to get boats through the most difficult of the world's sea passages.
Magalhães gave Tierra del Fuego island its name, too: He called it 'Land of Fire' after seeing clouds of smoke coming up from aborigines' bonfires, fuelled by huge quantities of natural gas beneath the surface, which they were using to perform their rituals.
He was also responsible for the Patagonia getting its title, after he first sighted the white-haired natives, of huge stature and incredible height – Magalhães and his team barely reached their waists, according to reports of the voyage – and massive feet, the captain dubbed them patagão, or 'bigfoot'.
In other words, 'Patagonia' more or less translates as 'bigfoot land'.
These days, you can avoid it altogether just by popping through the Panamá Canal, but that wouldn't be open for a while yet. Not for another 395 years after the Victoria and her companions left Sevilla.
What time is it in the Marshall Islands, and where can you find 11,000 virgins?
In addition to a new route to the Moluccas – and returning with the Victoria's hull bursting with spices – the voyage led to numerous discoveries, revelations that would change the way the entire planet operated, traded, travelled and lived.
Firstly, and although half a millennium on there's a huge movement which refutes the fact and is determined to prove otherwise, the world is a ball, not a disc, and the Victoria crew saw this for themselves.
In doing so, they 'discovered' time zones, collated pages and pages of cosmographic and nautical data which would be used for the next five centuries by every nation in Europe, and 'found' the Marianas Islands (now US-owned and split between Guam in the south and the Northern Mariana Islands at the top), the Marshall Islands, and the outer islands of the Philippines.
Leaving behind what, at the time, Magalhães dubbed the 'Cape of 11,000 Virgins' via the 'All Hallows Strait' – because of its being November 1, or All Saints' Day – the crew climbed the coast of Chile, becoming the first-ever Europeans to see the western side of the American continent, reaching a massive body of water with no sign of land in any direction.
What they dubbed 'the Pacific Ocean' – or 'Peaceful Ocean', a serious misnomer - would take exactly 99 days to cross before they hit the coast on the other side.
Murder, betrayal, and a dinner invitation they should have turned down
Now in the Philippines, having lost a few more of the crew through repeat rebellion and betrayal and many more through illness due to the extremely primitive conditions on board ship that were par for the course in the early 16th century, Magalhães, too, would perish – this time at the hands of a huge indigenous tribe.
Down to just 48 crew, all self-proclaimed Christians, they met their match against the 1,500 Muslim aborigines and their powerful tribe leader Lapu-Lapu, who objected to the King of Spain being sovereign governor and owner of their territory.
Magalhães was murdered by the tribes on Mactan Island, just off the shores of Cebu Island and opposite that of Bohol.
After his second in command, Duarte Barbosa, was betrayed by the people of Cebu – he and other crew were invited by the island governor to a banquet, and then all assassinated during dinner – the Basque mariner Juan Sebastián Elcano del Puerto was named captain of the mission.
And Lapu-Lapu's name would be given to a town on Cebu, still called as such today.
Elcano and 17 other crew lived long enough to circumnavigate the African continent via the Cape of Good Hope and then head north to Spain, reaching the sea port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz province, on September 6, 1522.
By that time, the Trinidad had become so badly deteriorated by catastrophic storms and tides that she had sunk off the Moluccas Islands, and the Concepción had nobody left to captain it after the Philippine massacre, leading the remaining crew to dismantle it and burn it.
Despite all the shipwrecks and the cost of keeping 245 people on board for over three years – even though only 18 made it home – the cargo of spices and the sale proceeds from it back in Spain meant the mission had netted a massive profit.
It would lead to trade routes opening between the Americas and Asia, and between Europe and Asia via the Americas, including a particularly lucrative and long-running commercial passage between México and the Philippines, as well as the gradual colonisation of the various island nations in the Pacific.
All change after 500 years: Author discovers alternative history
Just as we thought we knew at least the outline of the round-the-world Victoria tale – which would be the last complete tour of the globe for over 60 years, until Sir Francis Drake achieved it – along comes an historian who digs deeper and changes the names, places and dates.
Ramón Jiménez Fraile, former international news correspondent for EFE in Brussels, reporter for El Correo until the 1980s, and now media boss in the European Union, member of the Spanish Geographical Society – which has published countless of his articles – and author of numerous books about ancient explorers, has just released his latest work in time for the 500-year anniversary of the first-ever global circumnavigation.
And in it, he tells us that September 6, 1522 was not, in fact, the date we should be commemorating.
The Victoria crossed its own path, opposite the coast of Sénégal, on June 29 that year, so we've already missed the 500th birthday of the ship's return.
This would also mean that, instead of 18 crew on board – Elcano plus his 17 men – there were around 30 or so, since nearly half of those on the ship perished between west Africa and southern Spain.
And in any case, it wasn't 18 men, says Fraile, but 21: As well as Elcano and his 17, the expedition kidnapped and boarded 13 aborigines from the Molucca Islands, of whom three had survived by the time they docked in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
Whether these three indigenous peoples would go on to marry, have children, or even live much beyond their arrival in Spain, is not known; if so, the direct descendants of 16th-century Indonesian slaves might well still be out there among the nation's current 47 million inhabitants.
But Elcano only informed Emperor Carlos V of the 18 crew, himself included.
And he wasn't called Elcano, says Fraile: He was known at home, in the Basque Country, as ‘Elkano' and documented elsewhere as 'Delcano' – although the latter is likely to be a contraction of 'de Elcano'. The preposition meaning 'of' or 'from' was normally tacked onto the beginning of a word if it started with a vowel, back in Mediaeval and Renaissance Spain.
Little doubt has been cast on the name of Magalhães, or Magallanes to the Spanish State he swore allegiance to before taking the helm of five of its ships, although Fraile has unearthed fascinating information about his family origins, which the 'Spice Army' captain endeavoured to keep as hidden as possible.
He was a descendant of the Portuguese Pimentel line, a family considered traitors in their native country for having moved to the neighbouring Kingdom of Castilla – now the western half of mainland Spain.
And although Magalhães was one of the Christian front who – unsuccessfully – faced up to the 1,500-strong Muslim tribe off Cebu Island in the Philippines, his mother's surname was Mezquita.
This translates as 'mosque', and was reserved for the Moors, or northern African Arabs, who converted to Christianity to avoid being thrown out of Spain, imprisoned, tortured, killed or all four during the Inquisition.
So Magalhães was, in fact, of Muslim roots, according to Fraile's research.
Which only leaves the Victoria, and surely we can't have got that bit wrong – as well as being a human female name, it translates from Spanish to 'victory', so there's little margin for misinformation, isn't there?
Actually, not: She came from the Basque Country, from the fishing village of Ondarroa in the province of Vizcaya – the capital of which is Bilbao – and, according to local resident Pedro de Arizmendi, belonged to his father, Domingo de Apallua, until the King expropriated it against the family's will.
They had called her the Santa María, but Magalhães' swearing of allegiance to the Spanish flag and to King Carlos I on February 7, 1518 took place at the Convent of the Virgen de Victoria, or 'Virgin of Victory', inside its chapel, in the Triana district of Sevilla.
The ship was renamed after her – and, curiously, it was the Catholic calendar saint's day for the 'Virgin of Victory' two days after she reached Sanlúcar, so Elcano and crew paid a visit to her statue to thank her for taking care of them.
But Fraile's research seems to show that the vessel was always known by the Basque translation of Victoria, so her real title was Vitoria, the same name as the city that's capital of the region's land-locked province of Álava.
The ship has long been thought to have sunk out to sea within a few years of her epic voyage, but Fraile has unearthed documents that seem to show she was dismantled in Sevilla dockyard in 1580, for the wood she was made from to be used to build other vessels.
All this, and more, is apparently revealed in Fraile's latest publication, Magallanes' Vitoria: The Unseen Side of the First Round-the-World Voyage (La Vitoria de Magallanes: El Lado Insólito de la Primera Vuelta al Mundo).
Where's the Vi(c)toria Nao?
Whether or not the two reported fates of the now-famous vessel are true, you might have suspected that a wooden ship built in the early 16th century would be unlikely to survive until the early 21st. But you can still climb on board the Nao Victoria if you want to get a real feel for how Elcano, Magalhães and friends (or foes) lived, worked, rebelled, betrayed, murdered, and generally spent their three years – or less – covering 32,000 miles of ocean.
To mark the 470th anniversary and the 'Expo', or world exhibition, coming to Sevilla, a replica was built in 1992 – and has already followed Magalhães' and Elcano's route several times.
She did a complete world tour in one hit on two occasions, in 2004 and 2006, the first time a craft of this type had ever done so – effectively, a ship of 16th-century design, but made with stronger materials, such as treated, solid wood.
And the 26-metre (85'4”) craft has been around the globe many a time since, but with frequent stops.
It has parked up for anything from a couple of days to a week at a time in numerous ports around Europe and the USA, often several in the same country.
The ship was in Dénia (northern Alicante province) in mid-October 2021, and again at the end of April 2022, and was open to anyone who wanted to explore this floating museum for the nominal ticket fee of €5, or €3 for children aged five to 10 (under-fives get in free).
Whenever she's due in your nearest port – and the Victoria, or Vitoria, tends to make repeat stops in the same ones over the years – you can either buy your entries online to beat the queues, or pick them up at the entrance.
She was stationed in Sanlúcar over September 2-5, and is now due to remain in Sevilla from September 8-11.
Her next stops are not known as yet, and are usually only advertised at short notice - so, if you find out the ship has dropped anchor in your area, it's best to seize the opportunity there and then.
The Nao Victoria Foundation (Fundación Nao Victoria) also manages tickets for and events involving other famous craft, such as Torrevieja's S-61 Delfín submarine, and replicas, like that of Columbus' Santa María, and of a 17th-century galleon just like those used to transport cargoes of beeswax, silk and porcelain from China to México via the Philippines.
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