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Considering History and Narratives as Spain and the Philippines Approach

500th Anniversary
At the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Spain in the Philippines, which
narrative do we celebrate?
By Raisa Mabayo
May 24, 2019

On March 16, 2021, we will commemorate the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Europeans
in the Philippines. It is a day that means different things to different countries and their
peoples.

To the Philippines, that first contact meant an introduction to the Western world, the
impetus in the eventual formation of its territorial identity — often a common consequence
of empire building — and the beginning of its journey toward nation-building.
To Spain, whose monarch commissioned the voyage that set sail in 1519, this means a
celebration of its role in the technological development of nautical science and the will of its
leaders to reach previously unknown lands and recreate world geography. It marked the
beginning of one of the most powerful empires in history, defined by its maritime force and
Catholicism, and one that was to last four centuries.
To the rest of the world, this was arguably a key milestone in the history of globalization;
thereafter, the exchange of cultures, ideas, and technology was spurred to unprecedented
heights.
Not surprisingly, an eventual disconnect in the narrative surrounding Spanish arrival in the
Philippines developed as each country went on to construct their own national identities. In
the practice of national myth making, historical events are perused, selected for exclusion or
inclusion by storytellers, in this case the states, and then told and retold — proselytized,
really — to their respective peoples.

One such example of this is the marked difference in the retelling of the story of Ferdinand
Magellan’s death. Antonio Pigafetta, the Italian scholar who kept a detailed journal of the
events of the voyage, wrote of how Magellan was besieged by natives in Cebu while
attempting to help Rajah Humabon, a recently Catholicized local ruler convert others to
Catholicism and loyalty to Spain. Magellan believed that his display of force would be
enough to accomplish those tasks. That fateful decision and his miscalculation of enemy
forces, led by Lapu Lapu, resulted in Magellan’s death. He was struck in the face by a Mactan
warrior using a local scimitar. After, the Spanish ships retreated from Cebu.
Forty-four years later, Spain would be back to successfully establish its first settlement in the
islands, but that very first encounter in 1521 was marked by indigenous resistance. Of course
the story is much more complicated — there was discord and rivalry among local rulers, and
Magellan likely and unwittingly paid the price for getting in the middle of local politics. But it
hardly changes certain facts — the superiority of indigenous forces in this battle and local
leaders’ determination to eliminate threats to their rule. These factors speak to native
resistance and intolerance toward interlopers.
Few mainstream Spanish reading materials make mention of how Magellan died. The
Spanish institution Real Academia Historia, reporting on the first circumnavigation in the April
2019 edition of Diplomacia magazine, noted only that Magellan died in Mactan, an island in
the Philippines. In the quincentenary, the Spanish are keen to underscore the role of the
Basque captain Juan Sebastian Elcano, who took over from Magellan, who was Portuguese.
Technically, it was Elcano who completed the first circumnavigation in 1522.

Should you ask Spaniards what they know of how Magellan died, they would tell you
that as taught in school, he died from a poisoned arrow. The emphasis on poison — in
literature, a gendered weapon, associated with cowardice and the disempowered — alludes
to the rejection of the narrative that a larger-than-life character like Magellan was killed by
indigenous peoples living in a far-away land.
In contrast, in the Philippines, Magellan’s arrival in the country is presented as the arrival of a
foreign subjugator. Magellan’s story begins upon arrival, and quickly ends in his death at the
hands of a local warrior. This credit has traditionally been given to Lapu-Lapu, though
according to Pigafetta, it was a joint effort by native fighters.
Constantly highlighting Magellan’s defeat has served as a persistent reminder of that first
and rare victory against imperial Spain. This is rooted in Filipino nationalism that has largely
been shaped by the colonial experience, and often meant the purging of foreigners from
Philippine history textbooks. Unlike in Latin America, it is rare to find in the country a public
monument of a non-religious, political, historical figure with Caucasian features.
Filipinos are immensely proud of the fact that Magellan was killed in the Philippines. It is not
the death of Magellan that is celebrated, but that Filipinos, through Lapu-Lapu, resisted.
Lapu-Lapu the hero and Magellan the villain is a story that every Filipino child can retell by
heart. Five hundred years of history has created a narrative that glossed over the
complexities of warring tribes, of a fractious and intricate network of allegiances that
Magellan stumbled upon.
N
The Philippines’ National Quincentennial Committee, tasked to oversee celebrations in the
Philippines for the commemorations of 1521, has chosen to emphasize the natives’
hospitality and generosity to the expedition crew. After all, there might not have been a
circumnavigation without the natives’ offer of food and water to the Europeans at
Homonhon Island, and the replenishing of the ships’ provisions from local sources.
The focus on hospitality — a perceived, innocuous national character trait of Filipinos —
adds another layer to the national myth-making that could perhaps inform the next 500
years of the Philippine narrative.
The divergence in our retelling of a single history brings to the fore what ought to be
underscored by both countries as we mark the Spanish and Filipino encounter in 1521. This is
a story that, in reaching 500 years, has been reborn in a number of iterations. The main
versions should be explored and reconciled.
From the Filipino perspective, it is important to recall crucial elements in this story that have
often been overlooked in Western narratives in the past 500 years. When Magellan reached
the archipelago, the islands were already home to societies with varying degrees of
sophistication. Several “Datus” who allied themselves with the Europeans were clearly
operating on their own network of trade and familial relations that enabled them to interact
with Magellan and his crew confidently. From the 10th to 13th centuries, the archipelago was
home to societies that cultivated the talents of goldsmiths who crafted jewelry, regalia and
other artifacts made from gold, to be discovered later in 20th century Surigao.
In earthquake and typhoon-prone Philippines, the preservation of artifacts and architecture
is near impossible. It is easy to believe that everything we had, we learned from Spain. No
wonder, then, that the occasional discoveries of pre-colonial antiquities and prehistoric
remains, some dating as far back as 60,000 years ago, have evoked the precolonial past that
some Filipinos sentimentally seek asa basis for a national identity that is free of colonialism.
Until recently, March 16, 1521 was often, aggravatingly, marked as the date of the
“discovery” of the Philippines. This fallacious, Western-centric phrasing has been repeated
so many times in history textbooks that it will take several generations to expunge such
language from educational materials. It would take longer to change the national mindset
that the presentation of this event helped to mold. Arguably this has created a conviction of
inferiority among generations of Filipinos, told through Western-oriented social science
classes that their country was discovered by a European, and that their heritage began from
that moment of discovery.
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Yet the ultimate evidence of the strength of Filipinos’ pre-colonial identity thrives to this day
in the existence and uninterrupted use of Filipino languages. Unlike Latin America, the
Philippines has never been a fully Spanish-speaking country. This is another thing, perhaps,
that makes this country different from the rest of Spain’s former colonies.
Remarkably, Pigafetta wrote a brief glossary of the Butuanon and Cebuano languages, with
most of the words still widely used to this day by native speakers of those language. The fact
is, after three centuries of Spanish, and almost half a century of American rule, the
Philippines can count more than 175 languages. One may therefore argue that Spanish did
not become a lingua franca because in the same way that Tagalog is not widely spoken
outside of Luzon and parts of Mindanao dominated by Tagalog settlers, the local languages
were more than sufficient in communicating effectively among each other.
The Philippines is a country of passing conquerors and politics, but what remains constant
through it all is its languages. Unlike the physical markers of culture, language is disaster-
proof.
It is important to note that the Philippines has only ever been independent for 120 years,
versus the 333 years of Spanish rule from 1521-1898. There is so much in the Filipino psyche,
language and traditions that come from Spain, unknown to Filipinos, as they’ve been
entrenched so irrevocably in the modern Filipino way of life. It is also hard to speak of the
Filipino-Spanish relationship without mention of Catholicism, which was wholeheartedly
embraced by Filipinos much more so than the Spanish language.
The scars of history are long and deep for both sides, but the 500-year-old ties that bind the
Philippines and Spain are long, enduring, rich and very complex. Our understanding of these
ties is certainly worth rediscovering and long overdue for updates.
As Spain and the Philippines celebrate 500 years of knowing each other, it is important to
take stock of the things that define this relationship and find relevance and common
meaning from this crucial, watershed moment in world history. Understanding the reasons
behind certain narratives through a pragmatic view of history will surely allow both to learn
more from each other, and from there, further develop bilateral and people-to-people
relations that are forward-looking but knowingly carry the burden and the glories of the
past.
Narratives, after all, can be deliberately shaped and both countries have to be precise and
measured in coming up with new ones, as we celebrate the quincentenary of Philippine-
Spanish encounter in two years’ time.
Raisa Mabayo serves as Third Secretary and Vice Consul at the Philippine Embassy in Madrid,
overseeing Cultural Diplomacy, with a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of the
Philippines, Diliman.