THY WILL BE DONE
Thy Kingdom Come (diptych), pen and ink, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 40 in, by Iggy Rodriguez
In September 1521, in a fleet of five ships and 270 men called the Armada de Maluco, Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Spain to discover a westward route across the world in search of spices. It has been half a millennium since that voyage reshaped world trade and our idea of the size and shape of our world.
Since March 2021, 500 years later, there have been many activities constituting a global commemoration of this first circumnavigation, which opened up what Portugal considers “the Magellan Route,” a Portuguese feat, Magellan being Portuguese, and which Spain considers its own, even if it has all these years been credited mainly to a Portuguese explorer, not only because it was sponsored and financed by King Charles I, but more because, Magellan only made half the trip He was killed in the Philippines and it was Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano who made it back