argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Pension reduction for Elkano
  • Born September 6 1522.El Victoria had arrived at the port, after giving the first round of the world. Shortly thereafter, after the death of Magellan, the Walloon emperor Carlos V took over at a hearing Juan Sebastián Elkano the command of the expedition and, as a reward for his feat, promised him a pension of 500 golden ducts a year and a sandstone with the inscription Primus circumdedisti me (the first that turned me). The sailor had raised a stone, but there was no reward.
Nagore Irazustabarrena Uranga @irazustabarrena 2013ko urriaren 15
Elkanoren irudia
Elkanoren irudia

However, after turning around the world, Victoria was filled with sand (8.5 million wonders) and three years later Elkano invested his benefits on another trip. In 1525, the expedition led by Commander García Jofre of Loaisa and Elkano Mayor departed from La Coruña to the Moluccas; three brothers of Elkano, his brother-in-law and several colleagues were also part of the crew. Juan Sebastian's widow mother, Katalina del Puerto, and the rest of the family stayed on land, alone and impoverished. According to the chronicles of the time they were “in a situation of great need and exhaustion”. She sold the remains of her family to the army so she could continue, and when she had nothing to sell, she went to the crown to collect what Nadia had promised her son.

Catherine's case was entangled in the fabric of the bureaucratic spider; until Elkano's death is confirmed, the real treasury could not give him money. Juan Sebastián Elcano died in Molucas on 4 August 1526, due to a scurvy, in Victoria, which a few years earlier had led to the hotsanse. But the few survivors of this expedition did not arrive in Lisbon until ten years later. Thus, Elkano's will came to the court in Valladolid in 1536, at the hand of Andrés Urdaneta. By then, the crown owed to the heirs of Elkano 7,000 ducees (or nearly 2.5 martyrs). According to various sources, the treasury determined that the Elcano would start receiving 150,000 Marabedi a year, a figure lower than that promised, but there are no documents showing that the reduced pension has never been received.

Thus, in exchange for being the first to turn around the world, Elkano was filled with widows and orphans, impoverished and dissolved.