It happened on November 1, 497 years ago ... The King of Portugal Manuel I the Fortunate would never know his decisive and incredible outcome, because he would die before he knew about it. When that expert marine-soldier of the Portuguese nobility, a certain Fernando de Magallanes (Fernao de Magalhaes, Ferdinand Magellan), proposed to set up a flotilla in order to discover a route to the west to reach the strategic "islas de las especierias", he and his advisors considered it risky and unfeasible. They already had their route to the east by the Cape of Good Hope and Portugal was by then -together with Spain- the first colonial maritime power in Europe. An offended Magallanes would then go on to propose his strategic adventure to the all-powerful Carlos I, King of Spain and future Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (as Carlos V). In Seville (1518), then the economic capital of the world (by centralizing trade with the Western Indies through the Casa de la Contratacion), the Caesar Carlos will accept his intrepid journey through Castilian seas (according to the Treaty of Tordesillas, which in 1494 divided the world from an imaginary line on the Atlantic Ocean, between the European powers of Spain and Portugal), naming him also knight of the prestigious Order of Santiago, [...]
