The Aula de Cultura ABC narrates “the epic feat” of around the world

by time news

If Juan Sebastián Elcano and his men faced riots, tribes at war and ships in an advanced state of decomposition, the commemoration for the five centuries of the first circumnavigation of the world has also encountered a thousand difficulties. Many of the initiatives have been blurred by the pandemic, the Portuguese attempt to assume the leadership of the expedition and the political disinterest from certain ideologies that consider that any part of the Hispanic past must cause shame. And, despite everything, the anniversary has found a safe port to dock.

«A big change has been noticed, where ABC’s request to the Academy of History to certify the Spanishness of the feat was essential. What I find today in the classrooms and on the streets about what we know shows a great change”, affirmed yesterday María Saavedra, director of the CEU Elcano International Chair, during an ABC Culture Classroom entitled ‘Magallanes and Elcano, memory of a feat ‘.

At the CaixaForum in Madrid, two highly accredited voices met to talk about the historical episode and take stock of these years of research, reflection and rediscovery. Christopher Columbus de Carvajal and Gorosábel, Duke of Veragua and Admiral of the Indies, and María Saavedra discussed the importance of each of the protagonists of the journey: the promoter, Magallanes; and the person who decided to return through Poniente, Elcano.

Commemorative tile of the Magallanes-Elcano expedition, in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz).

ABC

Magellan is the follower of Columbus’s project, who wanted to reach Asia and reach the Spice Islands. Columbus was close to achieving it and other Spaniards continued looking for him without finding the way. Magellan set this old dream of the admiral as a goal”, explained the descendant of Columbus, who is well acquainted with the figure of Magellan. Elcano, for his part, continues to be a mysterious character about whom very little is known about how he ended up embarking on Magellan’s fleet. «Elcano participated being a mature and experienced person. We know almost nothing about his father, but we do know that he was from a good Basque family whose existence revolved around his mother. He was a man who had sailed a lot and fought for the King,” Saavedra said.

Magellan’s baton was taken by Elcano when the Portuguese-born navigator died in Mactan after getting involved in a tribal conflict. «It was a tremendous crisis: the death of the captain general who carried all the information. Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa and Elcano, as his deputy, finally took command of an expedition that lacked men and decided not to return the way it had come. They are well aware that they were going to complete the circumnavigation of the world, but Gomez Espinoso should have stayed behind. There Elcano emerges as an epic hero and his leadership was seen. Elcano makes a decision that he imposes: returning to Spain with a ship was not there to arrive », says Saavedra. And yet, eighteen reached Seville, “half dead”, after making the first circumnavigation in history.

“They dared to cross the ocean in a grand feat. Now they are trying to throw dirt from the politics of what happened 500 years ago »

Both sailors proved to be made of a different material at a time when technology was very precarious. «The great Spanish and Portuguese explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were characters who carried out monumental undertakings with very little means. They dared to cross the ocean in a grand feat. Now they are trying to bury the politics of what happened 500 years ago. It is sad that anyone who passes by on the street is allowed to tell the story and not professionals, “considered the Duke of Veragua and Admiral of the Indies during a meeting where he acted as moderator Carlos Aganzodirector of the Aula de Cultura ABC, who stressed that “we must remember the circumnavigation at a time when many references to the past have been lost, to the questioning of our entire history.”

«It was an epic feat that must be told and known. Today’s war is to make it known, encourage reading and get ideology and politics out of schools because if we are not going to have a very serious problem in the future,” Saavedra said Thursday, concerned about attempts to “legislate how historians have to tell the story. It is the harshest censorship I have experienced in my entire life.

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