Showing results for "The Expeditions" in Spain

Spain's position on Europe's southwestern corner has exposed it to cultural, political and actual winds blowing from all quadrants. Africa lies a mere nine miles to the south. The Mediterranean connects it to the civilisational currents of Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians and Byzantines as well as the Arabic lands of the Near East. Hordes from the Russian steppes were amongst the first to arrive. They would be followed by Visigoths, Arabs, Napoleonic armies and many more invaders and immigrants.

When Columbus triumphantly returned from America to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already smoldering conflict between Spain's renowned monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal's João II. Which nation was to control the world's oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI issued a proclamation laying the foundation for the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, an edict that created an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean dividing the entire known (and unknown) world between Spain and Portugal.

Fray Ramón Pané fue probablemente el primer europeo en aprender una lengua indígena americana, el taíno, que se hablaba en la isla La Española, a la que acompañó a Cristóbal Colón en su segundo viaje al nuevo mundo. Cuando tras haber pasado 26 años en aquellas tierras desconocidas vuelve a su Barcelona natal, lo hace con un impresionante legado: la historia del mayor descubrimiento de la humanidad.Su llegada a la isla de La española junto con los aventureros bajo el mando de Cristóbal Colón, se constituiría en una de las mayores gestas conocidas por el hombre, pero también en el comienzo del sometimiento de voluntades por la fuerza.

In July 1776 a pair of Franciscan friars, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, were charged by the governor of New Mexico with discovering a route across the unknown Southwest to the new Spanish colony in California. They had other goals as well, some of them secret: converting the indigenous natives along the way to the true faith, discovering a semi-mythical paradise known as Teguayo, hunting for sources of gold and silver, and paving the way for Spanish settlements from Santa Fe to Monterey. In strict terms, the expedition failed.