Philippines

The Basque history of the Philippines begins in the sixteenth century, and it was not an emigration but an imperial enterprise: Basques on the expeditions that reached the islands, a man from Gipuzkoa who founded Manila, the sailor who found the return route on which the Manila galleon depended for two and a half centuries and, much later, Basque trading houses and shipping companies in the capital. The colony came to have its own society in 1909 and a fronton in Manila, but today there is no recognised Basque centre in the Philippines.

It all began with the first expeditions, between 1519 and 1526. According to Mariano Estornés Lasa, the Basque contribution to the discovery of the islands and to their organisation was of great importance. On Magellan’s voyage of 1519 sailed Juan Sebastián Elcano, who completed the first circumnavigation of the world, and on the next one, García de Loaysa’s, Elcano went again, together with Andrés de Urdaneta, and died and was buried at sea.²

The conquest, between 1564 and 1572, was led by another Basque. Miguel López de Legazpi, born in Zumarraga in 1500 or 1505, had spent thirty-six years in Mexico, where he had been secretary of the town council, mayor and a senior official of the Casa de la Moneda (the Mint), when on 1 September 1564 he set out in command of the expedition. He settled in Cebu, founded Manila in 1571 and was governor and captain general until his death, in Manila, on 20 August 1572.³²

On that expedition, in 1565, the return route that made the Manila galleon possible was found (see Urdaneta and the tornaviaje).⁴ Much later, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were Basque trading houses and shipping companies in Manila (see the Manila trade).²⁵ And in 1909 the Basque colony of the Philippines came to have its own society (see the batzoki and pelota).²⁶

Today the official register of the Basque Government recognises no Basque centre in the Philippines.¹