The diplomat and historian Pedro Mártir de Anglería met in 1514 with the archbishop and royal cartographer Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca. They agreed to draw the first cartographic map of the Caribbean, a jewel of incalculable political value at the time and historical today. More than 500 years later, in October 2019, the Burgos Evolution Forum ―Institution that depends on the Burgos City Council and the Junta de Castilla y León― prepared an exhibition called Burgos. League zero of the trip of Magellan-Elcano, that paid tribute to the first bypass of the planet completed in 1522 by only 18 of the 239 men who started it. It was planned that this sample would be exhibited that map, which had been kept for centuries in the cathedral of Palencia, but the document never reached Burgos. The curator of the exhibition, Adelaida Segarra, discovered with horror that what she was handed over was a forgery and filed the subsequent complaint, which was never made public. Now, the Prosecutor’s Office confirms to EL PAÍS that “investigation procedures with number 95/19 were initiated, but they have been archived as it has not been possible to determine the authorship of the denounced events. To date, this point continues to be ignored ”.
The exhibition, which was organized by the Foundation VIII Centenary of the Cathedral of Burgos 2021 ―Integrated by the Cabildo de la Catedral de Burgos, the Archbishopric and the Chamber of Commerce―, it sought to recognize “the importance of the Castilian monarchs in the trip to La Especiería, the commercial, financial and artistic potential of Burgos, the relevance of the merchant Cristóbal de Haro and Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca and the lives of the sailors who completed the feat “, according to a 2019 statement. The exhibition included 173 pieces, a good part on loan from the Army Museum, the Naval and the Royal Chancery. Among the exhibited material were the praying busts of Cristóbal de Haro and Catalina de Ayala, cannons and weapons of the time, globes, portraits and maps.
The canon of Burgos Cathedral, Juan Álvarez Quevedo, recalls that the commissioner was extremely upset when she discovered the change, so she immediately reported the facts to the Prosecutor’s Office. “It cannot be determined when he was abducted,” says Álvarez Quevedo, “but he never made it to the Forum. That is completely safe. The Prosecutor’s Office, not finding the perpetrators, has archived, but I believe that it should not be like that ”. The priest also admits that the theft was never made public to prevent “the authors from destroying the historical document.” “That was our great fear,” says the canon. The National Police, for its part, has not responded to EL PAÍS ‘questions.
The study American cartography in Fonseca’s testament, by Jesús Varela and Marcos Vasallo Toranzo, published in 2016, explains that the missing map had a “political rather than technical intention and that it shows an idea of unity, of a whole Spanish in the discoveries. As if these geographically were the logical development of their physical space ”. They maintain that Rodríguez de Fonseca met Columbus in 1493 and that the archbishop was appointed royal delegate for the organization of the second trip to America. But both collided quickly because the Genoese refused to give him all the information he had gathered on the first voyage and in the end Columbus was dismissed on the third voyage for alleged insanity: he believed he had reached earthly paradise.
In this way, the cartographer ended up not only becoming the head of the following discoveries, “but he could also organize trips so that it would be known, once and for all, where the Spaniards had arrived” in previous expeditions. He put into practice his vast knowledge in cosmography, geography and cartography and set out to draw a map that “would inform the monarchs where the lands that were consuming so much money on trips without ever reaching the Moluccas were located”, Varela and Vasallo point out.
Rodríguez de Fonseca, on being commissioned by the Catholic Monarchs to continue with the discovery work, knew that he had to quickly present results to the monarchy, which demanded to know the real situation of its maritime investments. Pressured by the monarchs, he thus undertook a “rational, methodical and orderly” project. He sent expeditions with men of his trust and spies that achieved great cartographic results and that, incidentally, facilitated the layout of the famous map of Juan de la Cosa in 1500. In fact, its strategic value caused the kings to declare it secret.
The missing map represented the Gulf of Mexico, northern South America, the entire Caribbean, the Canaries and even the Strait of Gibraltar. To draw it, both Spanish and Portuguese cartography were used, drawn up by Américo Vespucio.
Finally, Fonseca and Anglería, having finished the work, handed over their work to an engraver, who carved it out of boxwood, and it was included as an image in a book called Babylonian Legation, the one that was kept in the cathedral of Palencia, which arrived in Burgos without the map, and that the researchers do not know where it is, or when it was replaced.
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