{
  "id": "juan-sebastian-elcano",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Juan Sebastián Elcano",
  "summary": "Basque mariner (c. 1487-1526) who commanded the ship Victoria on the final leg of the Magellan expedition and completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth, returning to Spain in September 1522 with a handful of survivors. The voyage proved in practice that the world's oceans are connected and laid the route knowledge for a Spanish trans-Pacific link.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "exploration",
    "navigation",
    "circumnavigation",
    "biography"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-navigation-manuals-in-england"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-real-global-currency"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "navarrete-coleccion-de-los-viages-tomo-v-1837"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "sarmiento-viage-al-estrecho-1768"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "isabel-barreto"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "piloto-mayor-y-cosmografos-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "pesqueria-vasca-de-terranova"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who completed the first circumnavigation of the world?",
    "What happened to the Magellan expedition after Magellan died?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The expedition of five ships that left Spain in 1519 under Ferdinand Magellan returned as a single ship, the Victoria, which reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda in September 1522 under the command of Juan Sebastián Elcano, completing the first circumnavigation of the Earth.",
      "sources": [
        "pigafetta-first-voyage",
        "thomas-rivers-of-gold"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Magellan was killed at Mactan in the Philippines in April 1521; command arrangements changed several times afterwards, and Elcano commanded the Victoria on the homeward passage from the Moluccas across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope.",
      "sources": [
        "pigafetta-first-voyage",
        "thomas-rivers-of-gold"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Antonio Pigafetta, a participant who kept a journal of the entire voyage, recorded that only a small remnant of the original crews — on the order of eighteen men aboard the Victoria — returned with the ship to Spain in 1522.",
      "sources": [
        "pigafetta-first-voyage"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Charles V rewarded Elcano with an augmentation of arms featuring a globe and the Latin motto Primus circumdedisti me (\"You were the first to circle me\").",
      "sources": [
        "thomas-rivers-of-gold"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Anglophone accounts habitually end the story at Magellan's death, leaving the completed circumnavigation — a Spanish-crewed, Spanish-financed feat finished by Elcano — undertold. This object binds the completion claims to the participant account (Pigafetta) plus a standard academic history.",
  "confidence": 0.9,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-08",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/juan-sebastian-elcano",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/juan-sebastian-elcano.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Juan Sebastián Elcano",
    "description": "Basque mariner (c. 1487-1526) who commanded the ship Victoria on the final leg of the Magellan expedition and completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth, returning to Spain in September 1522 with a handful of survivors. The voyage proved in practice that the world's oceans are connected and laid the route knowledge for a Spanish trans-Pacific link.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/juan-sebastian-elcano",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-08",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "The First Voyage Round the World, by Magellan",
        "url": "https://archive.org/details/firstvoyageround00piga"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Juan Sebastián Elcano"
  }
}