The Arrival of the Spanish-The Philippines' recorded history began half a world away in a small,

dusty town in southwestern Spain. The Treaty of Tordesillas was inked in 1494, dividing
between Spain and Portugal the yet-unexplored world. Everything to the east of a line 370
leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic belonged to Portugal and everything west
was Spain’s.

The Portuguese set off to navigate Africa’s Cape of Good Hope in search of the riches of the
Spice Islands, while the Spanish headed across the vast Pacific. The captain of Spain’s search
was a Portuguese who had taken up the flagof Castile and the Spanish name Hernando de
Magallanes; to the English-speaking world, he is Ferdinand Magellan.

First contact- Magellan took 109 days to cross the Pacific Ocean but missed every island in the
vast body of water, save the tiny atoll of Poka Puka and Guam. In 1521, he made landfall on the
island of Homonhon, off the southern tip of Samar in the Philippines. Calling the new lands
Lazarus, after the saint’s day on which he first sighted them, Magellan sailed on through the
Gulf of Leyte to Limasawa island. There he celebrated the first mass in Philippines’ history.Six
weeks later, Magellan was dead. He had sailed to the island of Cebu, where he Christianized
the local rajah (king) and his followers. However, a chieftain of Mactan – the island where
Cebu’s international airport now sits – rebelled against the Rajah of Cebu and his foreign
guests. Chieftain Lapu Lapu and his 2,000 men defended their island against 48 armor-clad
Spaniards in April 1521. A white obelisk today marks the spot where Magellan was slain.

Gaining control- It was not until 1565 that Spain, under Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, gained a
foothold in Cebu. Over the next few years, the Spanish pushed northward, defeating Muslim
chieftain Sulayman and taking over his fortress of Maynilad, facing what is now Manila Bay.
Here, in 1571, Legazpi built the Spanish walled city of Intramuros.Bands of conquistadors,
newly arrived from Mexico, fanned out from Intramuros to conquer Luzon and the Visayas. They
met ineffectual opposition, and soon entrenched themselves as lords of great estates worked by
the natives, called indios, in the manner as applied to Mexican “Indians.” The friars who
accompanied them rapidly converted the population, building churches, schools, roads, and
bridges, while accumulating vast land holdings for the Catholic Church.