EVERY student of Philippine history is familiar with Antonio Pigafetta’s first person account of The First Voyage Around the World, 1519-1522. In 2022, as the Philippines prepared for the fifth centenary of the historic voyage, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) released the book Another Report About Magellan’s Circumnavigation of the World: The Compilation by Fernando Oliveira, edited by Karl-Heinz Wionzek.
The latter volume was not intended to contradict or replace Pigafetta’s account. It is simply an additional, valuable source that can be used to supplement Pigafetta.
The important point to remember is that Pigafetta was an eyewitness participant; he was an Italian nobleman, a gentleman adventurer and assistant to Magellan, serving under the Spanish-sponsored expedition and writing about the voyage. His report was addressed to “the most illustrious and excellent Lord, Philipe Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.”
The text edited by Wionzek is a translation and study of an account compiled by Fernando Oliveira, a Portuguese scholar who wrote about the voyage decades later, probably between 1555 and 1560, based on earlier reports. While Pigafetta’s narrative is adjudged accurate by most readers including the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who described it as “a strictly accurate account that nonetheless resembles a venture into fantasy,” reading Oliveira’s report along with it gives the larger picture provided by temporal and, perhaps, emotional distance.
Understandably, Pigafetta celebrates Magellan in his book for leading an unprecedented enterprise, while Oliveira’s account is more detached and less concerned with glorifying him. The NHCP foreword explicitly notes that Oliveira offers “a new perspective” distinct from the participant narrative: “As he did not witness the circumnavigation firsthand, Fernão de Oliveira’s account pales in comparison to that of crewmembers... Yet it lends us a new perspective on the voyage... from a disinterested scholar, who, like most of us, is devoid of predilections regarding the gains and merits of an undertaking of such magnitude but rather is simply interested in how a fleet of five ships sailed to the ends of the Earth and lived to tell the tale.”
Pigafetta’s position as witness and chronicler during the voyage provided him a front-seat view of the situation and gave his account a sense of immediacy and color. He was able to focus on local customs, religious ceremonies, descriptions of peoples, marvels and curiosities. Describing Homonhon Island in Eastern Samar, he writes: “The island where we were is called Homonhon; but since we found two springs there of the clearest water, we called it ‘the watering-place of good signs,’ for there were the first signs of gold, which we found in those districts. We found a great quantity of white coral there, and large trees with fruit a trifle smaller than the almond and resembling pine seeds, and also many palms, some of them good and others bad.”
On the other hand, Oliveira is generally more interested in routes, the weather, distances, navigation, strategic objectives: “At the end of August 1520, Fernão de Magalhães departed with his fleet from St. Julian’s River and continued on his voyage. Next, at a distance of twenty leagues, they entered the other river which the Santiago had discovered. The fleet stayed here for two more months because the weather was still cold in that region, which begins at 50 degrees and extends to higher latitudes.”
The difference is most marked in the way Magellan’s death is described.
Oliveira’s account is straightforward and sober: “... since (the natives) were incomparably more numerous, they prevailed, and our men were not able to defend themselves or escape, and, fighting until they were exhausted, some died, and Fernão de Magalhães among them....”
Pigafetta’s version: “Immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide.”
Because of these differences, these two works are complementary rather than redundant, although historians usually treat Oliveira as a secondary witness whose account must be weighed against eyewitness sources such as Pigafetta.
It is important to recognize that Pigafetta and Oliveira are doing different things. Pigafetta writes as a witness. He wants the reader to share the wonder of discovery, unfamiliar peoples, strange plants and animals, religious conversions. His account often reads like a travel diary.
Oliveira writes as a historian or compiler. He is more interested in what happened, where ships sailed, strategic decisions, the larger significance of the expedition.
We should be careful not to assume that because Oliveira disagrees with Pigafetta, Oliveira is right. Pigafetta has a tremendous advantage: he was actually there. His testimony carries enormous weight.
However, his extreme loyalty to Magellan may sometimes make us wonder: Is he telling us exactly what happened, or what he believed happened?
If Pigafetta gives us the expedition through the eyes of a devoted participant, Oliveira provides something equally valuable: distance.
When they agree — on the broad sequence of events, the route, the arrival in the Philippines — we feel assured. When they differ in emphasis, we learn something else: how memory is shaped by intention and emotion.
In many ways, the most important contradiction is not over factual details but over interpretation.
As the Roman historian Tacitus observed, history often emerges not from a single account, but from the conversation among many voices. Pigafetta and Oliveira are participating in precisely that conversation, five centuries after the ships left Seville.