Elcano: The Very First Around the Globe?

The monument of Juan Sebastián Elcano. Cavite 1900.

Some statues and illustrations depict Elcano with a globe and the Latin inscription; "Primus circumdedisti me" (You went around me first). But does he deserve the credit being the first to circumnavigate the world?

Who is Elcano? Filipinos might ask..... A street in Binondo?

Sorry for Elcano, the very first history lesson every Filipinos come to know is that boring repetition; "Who discovered the Philippines?" Almost everyone would answer. Yes, Filipinos know Magellan even just in name.

Magellan incidentally was also the leader whom Elcano and some of his Spanish colleagues mutinied against in that famous expedition the world now commemorates. (500th anniversary of the first voyage around the globe).

If not for the Italian chronicler Pigafetta, who was very much pro-Magellan, Elcano might have run away with the title and the monicker.

Yet in Spain they honor Elcano. In the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, they want to relive this debate, putting the name Magellan-Elcano side by side to commemorate the momentous event.

But I say now, we here in our region should laugh and laugh out loud. Because in truth the very first man to circumnavigate the world could have been a "Malay", Magellan's slave (faithful butler). And he beats both Elcano and Magellan by half a world.




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