When Elcano didn't tell the whole truth

In the Naval Museum of Madrid, the Navy has placed in a prominent place one of the jewels of world cartography, Juan de la Cosa's world map (96 centimeters wide by 183 centimeters long).

This is the first letter - declared secret by the Catholic Monarchs - where a global vision of the known world was drawn.

However, this impressive document drawn in 1500 suffers from a gigantic

black hole.

: the Pacific Ocean, a blue expanse of 155 million square kilometers and more than 25,000 islands and where until that date no one had entered.

The value of the first trip around the world lies in the fact that its two protagonists, the Portuguese Fernando de Magallanes and the Spanish Juan Sebastián Elcano, sought a step that would connect the Atlantic with the Pacific and thus discover what lay beyond the limits of the map. .

More information

• The cabin boy who deserted and was able to tell the trip around the world

The Portuguese admiral accomplished the feat in November 1520, but was heroically killed in April of the following year in an indigenous attack on the Philippines.

The second, for its part, ended the company in September 1522, managing to return to the peninsula and demonstrating the sphericity of the planet.

Who deserves the honors of such a feat?

Undoubtedly both.

However, in the first account of the return, the one written by the Italian Antonio de Pigafetta, survivor of the expedition, Elcano is not named.

Why?

How can the name of the Basque sailor be eliminated without whose determination everything would have ended in a resounding failure?

This is one of the great mysteries - there are many more - of this feat of which only 18 men - began 239 - could attest.

The excellent novel

No One Knows It

, by the journalist Tony Gratacós (Barcelona, ​​54 years old), offers a possible answer: Elcano asked not to be mentioned to honor the memory of Magellan, who was for a time an alleged Portuguese spy.

Cover of 'Nobody knows it', by Tony Gratacós.

The work starts from an irrefutable historical fact: the

San Antonio

ship

, about to cross the Strait of Magellan, the most important moment of the expedition, the passage between the two oceans, which everyone feared could not be achieved, revolts and decides to return to Seville. Why? Gratacós lets his imagination fly: because it was the one that stored most of the provisions that ensured the success of the Spanish adventure and because it was commanded by Portuguese spies who wanted to warn their king that the Portuguese monopoly was about to blow up. over the precious spices.

Portugal has always claimed the success of the first round the world ―Italy, the discovery of America―, despite the fact that it is indisputable that it did everything humanly possible to make it fail. In fact, Elcano had to make a huge

detour

to avoid landing on the African and Asian coasts, full of Portuguese bases, so as not to be caught.

The kingdoms of Spain and Portugal were the most important on the globe in the 16th century and the world was divided into two halves in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1495. That immense power made them irreconcilable enemies anywhere, which led them to employ for reasons of State, the methods necessary - sometimes unspeakable - to achieve the defeat of the enemy. The protagonist of Gratacós's novel is called Diego de Soto, a young graduate who begins to work for the royal chronicler Pedro Mártir de Anglería. And Soto, an innocent apprentice, is involved in this international intrigue dotted with deaths and mysteries that escape his understanding. But little by little, as in

thrillers

, he understands ...

It can be argued that, contrary to the Gratacós story, although the characters are real, the situations are not. But it is not a historical novel, but rather a story made into a novel, in the style of a Richelieu fighting the Three Musketeers, Captain Alatriste fighting with the Tercios or Edmundo Dantés fleeing the Castle of If. Pure invention, but invention well told.

Nobody knows it

is a novel of spies, swashbuckling informants, of great parties in Sevillian palaces, of blood, of religious gathered in convents of Valladolid who keep dark secrets, of secluded Andalusian farmhouses, of friendship, of silent struggles of power, love ... And imagination.

"There are those who will judge that the novel takes too many licenses," writes the author, with the events that occurred on the expedition.

It will never be possible to prove what really happened on the other side of the world, but what is written here is not entirely implausible if we look at the historical context.

Remember that history is always written by those who return ”.

Because what really happened, nobody knows.

'Nobody knows' (2021).

Amazon.

533 pages.

20.90 euros.

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