Ruy López de Villalobos
gigatos | March 30, 2022
Summary
Ruy López de Villalobos (Málaga, Spain, 1500 – Ambon Island, 1546) was a Spanish nobleman and sailor who explored the Philippine Islands and tried, unsuccessfully, to colonize them and establish a viable trade route with the Spanish territories in America. He is known because it was his expedition that gave the name to those islands as “Philippines” in honor of Philip II of Spain, then prince, from whom they take their present name.
The discoveries and political-economic interests of the Portuguese and Spanish empires had led them to draw up a distribution of spheres of influence for the explorations, conquests and economic exploitation of the territories that were coming to light 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 equal 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 as saying that the Tordesillas line continued, after crossing the poles, through the opposite hemisphere). The Portuguese never admitted this Spanish interpretation.
Decades later, when the Magellan and Elcano expedition, 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, since both powers, each navigating their own area of influence, were able to access East Asia. It is important to point out that, in those times, it was technically impossible to know with certainty whether certain lands (most notably the Moluccas Islands, also known as the Spice Islands) were in the Spanish or Portuguese area, and this uncertainty was a source of endless 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. Thus, the monarchs of both States were forced to complete the division: this new treaty, which modified (according to the Spanish interpretation) or completed (according to the Portuguese opinion) the Treaty of Tordesillas, was the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529), which fixed the limits of the peninsular dominions in Asia.
The Treaty of Saragossa established a new meridian of demarcation, located 1763 kilometers east of the Moluccas. By signing this treaty, Spain not only gave up the Moluccas Islands, but also abandoned its claim that the globe was divided into two parts of equal size: in fact, even at that time it was clear that the Portuguese zone of influence, as of the Treaty of Saragossa, covered a larger area than the Spanish part. However, in the following decades the treaty was not fully complied with, as 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 upon in Tordesillas in 1494.
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Economic motivations and political implications of the expedition
Magellan”s exploration had led to the discovery of new lands that Charles V was ambitious for: the Philippine Islands. This group of islands was not yet known by this name, but Magellan had baptized them as the Poniente Islands or the San Lazaro Archipelago.
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…), which were highly valued in 16th century Europe. We must bear in mind that this trade had been until then the monopoly of the Portuguese, who had become rich thanks to it.
The problem for Charles V was that in the Treaty of Saragossa Spain had recognized the Portuguese sphere of influence and their possession of the spice-producing Moluccas. The Philippines were in a very tight spot as far as the treaty was concerned, so stern instructions were given to Lopez de Villalobos to limit himself to trying to explore and colonize the Philippines while avoiding the Portuguese territories.
In 1541, Lopez de Villalobos was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza y Pacheco, the first viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition to the West Islands (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 of 370 to 400 crew members aboard four major ships, a brigantine and a schooner: Santiago, Jorge, San Antonio, San Cristóbal (piloted by Ginés de Mafra), San Martín and San Juan de Letrán (commanded by Bernardo de la Torre).
On December 25, the fleet headed for the present Revillagigedo Islands, off the west coast of Mexico, one of whose islands had been discovered in 1533 by Fernando de Grijalva. The following day they rediscovered a group of islands located at 9° or 10° N, which they called Corrales, and anchored in one of these islands, which they named La Anublada (today San Benedicto), and the rocks were given the name of Los Inocentes.
On January 6, 1543, they sighted several small islands at the same latitude and named them Los Jardines Islands (they were the islands of Eniwetok and Ulithi, already sighted in 1527 by the galleon Reyes, the ship commanded by Alvaro de Saavedra that Cortes 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 Cristobal, piloted by Ginés de Mafra, who had been a member of the crew of the Magellan-Elcano expedition in 1519 to 1522, was separated from the fleet during a heavy storm. This ship finally 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 history of Limasawa appeared in the work Historia de las Islas de Mindanao, Iolo, y sus adyacentes…, 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 papers on Limasawa have been translated into English by historians).
On February 29 they entered Baganga Bay, which they called 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 extreme hunger. He ordered his men to plant corn, but failed. On March 31, 1543, the fleet departed, attempting to return to Mazaua, in search of food. After several days of fighting, they reached Sarangani.
The galleon San Cristobal, which had arrived at Limasawa two months earlier, showed up unexpectedly with a cargo of rice and other food for the commander. On August 4, the San Juan and the San Cristobal were sent back to the islands of Leyte and Samar for more food. A Portuguese contingent arrived on August 7 and handed them a letter from Jorge de Castro, governor of the Moluccas, demanding an explanation for the fleet”s presence in Portuguese territory. Lopez de Villalobos replied, in a letter dated August 9, that they were not invading, and were within the demarcation line of the Crown of Castile. Afterwards, the San Juan, with Bernardo de la Torre as captain, was sent back to New Spain (Mexico), leaving on August 27, to find the route of the so-called “tornaviaje”. The ship discovered several islands, but not finding favorable winds, was forced to return to the Philippines (the desired route of the tornaviaje would be discovered 22 years later, by Andres de Urdaneta).
In the first week of September another letter arrived from Castro with the same protest, and Lopez 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 Cristobal. 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 the Philippine Islands in honor of the crown prince of Spain, the future King Philip II. Driven out by hostile natives, starvation and a shipwreck, Lopez de Villalobos was forced to abandon his island settlements and the expedition. They sought refuge in the Moluccas, and after some skirmishes with the Portuguese, they were imprisoned.
Lopez 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 by the Jesuit Francisco de Jaso (St. Francis Xavier) who was then on a journey of evangelization in the Moluccas under the protection of the King of Portugal, and as Nuncio of the Pope in Asia.
Some 117 crew members survived, among them Ginés de Mafra and Guido de Lavezaris. Mafra wrote a manuscript about Magellan”s 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. Mafra”s manuscript of 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 20th century and published in 1920.
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