Mafra’s account of Magellan expedition

WE must congratulate ourselves for the good luck that Antonio Pigafetta enjoyed. In an expedition with too many casualties and too few survivors, it was almost a miracle that the chronicler of the expedition was able to arrive at Seville in September 1521 after circumnavigating the world through Portuguese waters. Without his account, the reconstruction of numerous details of what happened would have been forgotten forever.

However, the fact that Pigafetta’s account is the most important source should not hide the fact that he also had his biases. Some of them are easy to trace. For example, he was a close friend of Magellan and sincerely lamented his death. Therefore, he only had praises for him. At the same time, he does not mention, even once, the name of Juan Sebastián Elcano, the captain of the Victoria, most probably because he took part in the first mutiny against Magellan before entering the Pacific Ocean. Hiding his name was a deliberate way to deny something very precious that he actually deserved for what he did later: posterity.