The commemorative coin pays tribute to the circumnavigation of the globe begun in 1519 by order of Carlos I, King of Spain, under the leadership of the Portuguese giant Ferdinand Magellan (≈1480-1521), who was to find a western route to the Spice Islands. The fleet of five ships and 270 men circumnavigated South America for the first time in 1520 through the "Strait of Magellan" and crossed the Pacific in 1521. In 1505-1512, Magellan had already sailed from the west to the Malay Archipelago (and back), which lies further east than Mactan, Philippines, where he died in 1521 in a battle with the indigenous population - thus he had crossed all the meridians of the earth westwards and, with a seven-year interruption, almost completed a full circumnavigation of the globe. Juan Sebastián Elcano (1476-1526) completed the expedition on the Nao Victoria in 1522 and provided proof of the spherical shape of the Earth. Among the only 18 returnees were the Italian chronicler Antonio Pigafetta and a cannoneer from Aachen named Maestre Anes in the ship's papers (who, as a participant in the Loaísa expedition started in 1525 - and an eleven-year odyssey - succeeded for the first time in making a second circumnavigation of the earth). In 1526, four more survivors, who were last on board the second remaining ship of the fleet, the Trinidad, returned to Europe as prisoners of the Portuguese competing with the Spanish, among them the German Hans Barge, who died in the dungeon in Lisbon in 1527. |
