500 Years Since the Completion of the First Circumnavigation of the Globe

A portrait of Juan Sebastián Elcano with a globe in the background. The commemorative inscriptions 'JUAN SEBASTIÁN ELCANO', 'PRIMUS CIRCUMDEDISTI ME', and '1519 – 1522', together with the issuing state 'ESPAÑA' and the year '2022'.

The first complete circumnavigation of the globe is one of the most consequential events in the history of European expansion. The expedition set out in 1519 under the command of the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan, in the service of the Spanish crown, with the goal of opening up a westward sea route to Asia. Magellan himself was killed in 1521 in a battle in the Philippines. It was the Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano who took command of the remaining ship after Magellan's death and led the severely depleted crew across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope back to Spain. On 6 September 1522, the Victoria arrived in Sanlúcar de Barrameda with 18 surviving crew members — the first ship to have circumnavigated the globe by sea. Emperor Charles V granted Elcano a coat of arms bearing the globe and the inscription "Primus circumdedisti me" — you were the first to circle me.

Juan Sebastián Elcano was born around 1487 in Getaria, in present-day Spanish Basque Country. Little is recorded of his early years, but before the Magellan expedition he was already an experienced seaman and had served, among other things, in the Spanish navy. His contribution to the successful homecoming was decisive: under the most difficult conditions, with an exhausted crew and an unseaworthy ship, he navigated one of the longest sea routes known at the time. Elcano died in 1526 on a further Pacific expedition. Spain honoured him in 2022, on the 500th anniversary of the Victoria's return, with a 2-euro commemorative coin bearing his name and the motto once granted to him by Charles V.