The Longest Voyage: Transformation

500 years ago, a long-dreamed of voyage to the mythical Orient and the Spice Islands on the still unexplored side of the world set out from Seville.
This voyage, started by Ferdinand Magellan in 1519, would, three years later, turn out to be the longest of its time. The first voyage around the world, completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano and the crew of the Victoria in 1522.

Elcano, Albo, and the surgeon-barber Bustamante traveled to Valladolid, summoned by Emperor Charles V. The chronicler Pigafetta gives an account. They took samples of spices to court and other curiosities, but above all they took, in their logbooks and chronicles, details of the longest journey ever made and in their derroteros, the means of reaching a new world. From Valladolid, the news traveled quickly to every corner of Europe. The world had changed for good.

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The arrival of the Spanish in the Maluku was inevitably a shock for Portugal who reclaimed its ownership via the Treaty of Tordesillas. The argument between the two powers brought about the signing of a peace treaty in 1529 which would resolve the dispute over the Spice Islands.

With the signing of the Treaty of Zaragoza (Tratado de Zaragoza), the Emperor ceded any rights he had over or had acquired through the discoveries made by the Spanish on the Maluku territory, and he offered not to sail or hire people there in exchange for 350,000 ducats (approximately 52.5 million US dollars) of gold.

The signing of this treaty struck a balance in the spice trade and on the eastern routes, some could continue to sail to the Indies via the African coast and the Indian Ocean, others could continue to explore the southern seas. A new scenario would emerge with the Spanish conquest of the Philippine Islands and the discovery of the tornaviaje Pacific return route.

Juan Sebastián Elcano died in 1526 in the Pacific Ocean attempting to repeat the voyage to the Maluku Islands to secure the route, to begin to exploit it, and garner the rewards it promised a priori. Accompanying him on this new expedition, recorded as one of the great disasters of ocean navigation, was a young cabin boy called Andrés de Urdaneta.

Between 1526 and 1545, five fleets followed one another out to the Pacific, but none managed to find the return route to New Spain, which was the expansive reason behind the departure of the final four. As an older man, 40 years later, Andrés de Urdaneta, the youngster who had accompanied Elcano on his last voyage, discovered the last unknown ocean route: the Pacific return sea route known as the tornaviaje.

The Pacific tornaviaje: the route that had proved impossible for the Trinidad; a route that would be sailed for the next 300 years by Manila Galleons. From that moment on, the world would become forever more connected.

But the borders of the unknown don't disappear, they just change. There will always be a border and before it, a person, a dream and a boat. This is the longest journey of all: dreams are dreamed, boats change, explorers come and go, but there is always the same sailing spirit and never-ending journey: that of humankind towards the edge and the unknown.