Joaquim Magalhães de Castro
In the courts of Tomar, in 1581, at the time of the official consecration of the Iberian Union, Philip I of Portugal and II of Spain, took care to safeguard the interests of the Portuguese settled in the East, prohibiting the Spanish from Manila the trade with China and forcing the Portuguese, in return, to stay away from the Philippines and Mexico, although such bans had never been enforced.
Proof of this is the fact that exchanges between Macau and Manila kept going on, albeit clandestinely and often carried out by Chinese ships or from other kingdoms. In 1585, the Jesuit Alessandro Valignano mentions the viceroy’s protests to the governor of the Philippines, and the messages addressed to those in charge of the city of Macau telling them that if they saw there any Castilians “without the particular order of his majesty” should be arrested and sent to Goa.
Aware of their fragility, now that a foreign king was occupying the Portuguese throne, most Macanese merchants defended fiercely the prohibition against the Spanish coming to China, even though they claimed the right to send their own ships to Manila, “for that was the only way to avoid their interests being asphyxiated by the business of the Spaniards,” as historian José Manuel Garcia notes. They claimed that Chinese silk was insufficient “to supply all the markets that wanted it,” and that the Spaniards “unbalanced the relations of the Portuguese with the Chinese” and raised the prices of the valuable merchandise.
Interestingly, not only were the Portuguese in Macau and India fighting for the absence of direct Spanish contact with China, but also the merchants of Seville, since, if that happened, such contacts represent less silver going into their coffers; and the truth is that “from the beginning of the 17th century” New World silver began to be scarce in Spain.
Among the opponents of the prohibitive measures was the Bishop of Malacca Dom João Ribeiro Gaio, who saw advantages “in lifting the interdiction of trade between the Portuguese in China and the Castilians in New Spain, suggesting the way in which this should be carried out.”
It is in this context that Macau will witness a series of historic transoceanic voyages, the first of which will be carried out by the ship San Juan which on 24 July 1584, almost simultaneously with the official galleon San Martín, leaves the Macau bar under the command of Francisco Gali, “sailor and cartographer,” who, having arrived from Manila the previous year, had wintered in Macau.
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