Ruy Lopez de Villalobos

Ruy López de Villalobos (Málaga, Spain, 1500 - Isla Ambon, 1546) was a Spanish nobleman and sailor who explored the Philippine islands and tried, without success, to colonize them and establish a viable trade route with the Spanish territories in America. He is known because it was his expedition that named those islands as "Philippines" in honor of Philip II of Spain, then prince, from whom they take their current name.

Precedents of the expedition

The discoveries and political-economic interests of the Portuguese and Spanish empires had led them to draw up a distribution of spheres of influence with a view to the explorations, conquests and economic exploitation of the territories that were seeing the light of day on European maps. In 1494, Spain and Portugal signed an agreement known as the Treaty of Tordesillas, which drew a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands to divide the world into two parts: one Spanish to the west and the other Portuguese to the east. The Spanish understood and interpreted that the two areas of influence were exactly the same in terms of the number of meridians they covered, that is to say that both areas extended from pole to pole, each covering 180 degrees from east to west (which is the same thing). to say that the Tordesillas line continued, after crossing the poles, through the opposite hemisphere). The Portuguese never admitted this Spanish interpretation.

Decades later, when the expedition of Magellan and Elcano, upon completing its circumnavigation in 1522, demonstrated that the Indian Ocean was open to navigation on both sides, it became clear that the interests of Spain and Portugal were going to come into conflict conflict, since both powers, each navigating their own area of influence, were able to access East Asia. It is important to note that, in those days, it was technically impossible to know for sure whether certain lands (most notably the Moluccan Islands, also known as the Spice Islands) were in the Spanish or Portuguese area, and that uncertainty was the source of endless questions. discussions, and to this was added the fact that the Portuguese still did not accept the Spanish interpretation that the meridian antipodal to that of Tordesillas was a valid delimiter with which the Earth could be divided into two equal hemispheres. This is how the monarchs of both States were forced to complete the distribution: this new treaty, which modified (according to the Spanish interpretation) or completed (according to the Portuguese opinion) that of Tordesillas, was the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529), which He set the limits of the peninsular domains in Asia.

The Treaty of Zaragoza established a new demarcation meridian, located 1,763 kilometers east of the Moluccas Islands. By signing this treaty, Spain not only renounced the Moluccan Islands, but also abandoned its claim that the globe be divided into two parts of equal sizes: in fact, even at that time it was clear that the zone of Portuguese influence, from the Treaty of Zaragoza, it covered a larger area than the Spanish part. However, in the following decades the treaty was not fulfilled in its entirety, since Spain colonized islands that were clearly on the Portuguese side, such as the Philippines and parts of Formosa (present-day Taiwan), while Portugal, for its part, extended the area of Brazil to the west of the meridian agreed at Tordesillas in 1494.

Economic motivations and political implications of the expedition

The exploration of Magellan had led to the discovery of new lands that Carlos V coveted: the Philippine Islands. This set of islands was not yet known by this name, but Magellan had baptized them as Islas de Poniente or archipelago of San Lázaro.

The possession of a territorial base in this area was a succulent commercial morsel, since it allowed access to trade with China and Japan. In addition, there was access to spices (cloves, cinnamon, pepper...), tremendously valued in Europe in the XVI century. We must take into account that this trade had been until then a monopoly of the Portuguese, who had become rich thanks to it.

The problem for Carlos V was that in the Treaty of Zaragoza Spain had recognized the Portuguese sphere of influence and its possession of the Moluccan Islands, great producers of spices. The Philippines were in a borderline situation as far as the treaty is concerned, so López de Villalobos was given severe instructions to limit himself to trying to explore and colonize the Philippines avoiding Portuguese territories.

Expedition to the Philippines (1542-43)

In 1541, López de Villalobos was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco, the first viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition to the Islas del Poniente (East Indies) in search of new trade routes. The expedition departed from the Mexican port of Barra de Navidad on November 1, 1542, a fleet with 370 to 400 crew members aboard four larger ships, a brig and a schooner: Santiago, Jorge , San Antonio, San Cristóbal (directed by Ginés de Mafra), San Martín and San Juan de Letrán (under the command of Bernardo de la Torre).

On December 25, the fleet headed for the current islands of Revillagigedo, off the west coast of Mexico, one of whose islands had been discovered in 1533 by Fernando de Grijalva. The next day they rediscovered a group of islands located at 19° or 20°N which they called Corrales, and anchored on one of these islands, which they named La Anublada (today San Benedicto), and they gave the rocks the name Los Inocentes.

On January 6, 1543, they sighted several small islands at the same latitude and called them Islas Los Jardines (they were the islands of Eniwetok and Ulithi, already sighted in 1527 by the galleon Reyes, the ship commanded by Álvaro de Saavedra that Cortés had sent to cross the Pacific). They also discovered the island of Palau, which belonged to Spain until 1899, when it was sold to Germany along with the rest of the Caroline Islands.

Between January 6 and 23, 1543, the galleon San Cristóbal, piloted by Ginés de Mafra, who had been a member of the crew of the Magellan-Elcano expedition from 1519 to 1522, was separated from the fleet during a severe storm. This ship eventually reached the island of Mazaua, a place where Magellan had anchored in 1521. This was Mafra's second visit to the Philippines, which is identified today as Limasawa on the southern island of Leyte. (The story of Limasawa appeared in the work Historia de las Islas de Mindanao, Iolo, y sus adjacentes..., published posthumously in Madrid in 1667 and which had been written by a Spanish Jesuit priest, Fray Francisco Combes (1620-65), who established several monasteries in the Philippines. His documents on Limasawa have been translated into English by historians.)

On February 29, they entered Baganga Bay, which they named Malaga, on the eastern coast of the island of Mindanao. López de Villalobos named it Cesárea Karoli in honor of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V of Spain. The fleet remained there for 32 days, the entire crew suffering from extreme starvation. He ordered his men to plant corn, but it failed. On March 31, 1543, the fleet set out, attempting to return to Mazaua, in search of food. After several days of fighting, they reached Sarangani.

The galleon San Cristóbal, which had arrived in Limasawa two months earlier, turned up unexpectedly with a load of rice and other food for the commander. On August 4, the San Juan and the San Cristóbal were sent back to the islands of Leyte and Samar for more food. A Portuguese contingent arrived on August 7 and delivered a letter from Jorge de Castro, Governor of the Moluccas, demanding an explanation for the fleet's presence on Portuguese territory. López de Villalobos responded, in a letter dated August 9, that they were not invading, and were within the demarcation line of the Crown of Castile. Later, the San Juan, with Bernardo de la Torre as captain, was sent back to New Spain (Mexico), departing on August 27, to find the route of the so-called "tornaviaje&# 34;. The ship discovered several islands, but finding no favorable winds, it was forced to return to the Philippines (the long-awaited return trip route would be discovered 22 years later, by Andrés de Urdaneta).

In the first week of September another letter from Castro arrived with the same protest, and López de Villalobos wrote a new reply on September 12, with the same message as the first. He left for Abuyog, in Leyte, with the remaining ships, the San Juan and the San Cristóbal . The fleet was unable to advance due to unfavorable winds. In April 1544 he embarked for the island of Amboina. Villalobos and his crew then headed for the islands of Samar and Leyte, which they named Philippine Islands in honor of the crown prince of Spain, the future King Philip II. Driven out by hostile natives, famine, and a shipwreck, López de Villalobos was forced to abandon his settlements on the islands and the expedition. They sought refuge in the Moluccas, and after some skirmishes with the Portuguese, they were imprisoned.

López Villalobos died on April 4, 1546, in his prison cell on the island of Amboina, of a tropical fever, or as the Portuguese said "of a broken heart". On his deathbed he was attended to by the Jesuit Francisco de Jaso (San Francisco Javier) who was then on an evangelization trip in the Moluccas under the protection of the King of Portugal, and as Nuncio of the Pope in Asia.

Some 117 crew members survived, including Ginés de Mafra and Guido de Lavezaris. Mafra wrote a manuscript on the Magellan expedition, in which he had participated. They embarked for Malacca, where the Portuguese put them on a ship bound for Lisbon. About thirty chose to remain in Malacca, including Mafra. His manuscript on Magellan's expedition was taken to Spain by a friend aboard a Portuguese ship, but remained unknown for several centuries, until it was discovered in the 18th century XX and published in 1920.