Carmen Borrego Plá publishes in collaboration with the Regulatory Council the Magellan “Navy Book”

“The relationship between Jerez wine and the Magellan expedition begins long before the ocean crossing,” says the winery and historian Carmen Borrego Plá.
She has just published, with the collaboration of the Regulatory Council and El Maestro Sierra wineries, the work “Expense list for the Navy of Fernando de Magallanes (1518-1519). Transcription and Reflections ”.

Borrego Plá explained that “the navy book of the year immediately preceding the expedition’s departure has been transcribed, from which we can extract a great deal of data on the microhistory that took place in the context of its preparation: the world of the artisans, commerce, laborers and cabin boys, transport … and, of course, Jerez wine ”.

Borrego Plá explained that the document that has been transcribed and studied, deposited in the Archivo de Indias, “is the draft of the expedition’s accounts for the previous year, but also the only document of these conditions of the period, so its Character is invaluable from a documentary point of view because the original has not been found. ” “Furthermore, he explains,” only on a previous occasion had it been partially transcribed, in 1918 by the Tobacco Company of the Philippines, based in Barcelona, ​​but without attending to abbreviations, crossed out paragraphs, materials, etc. ”

For the historian, “the Regulatory Council has been very generous in embarking, never better said, in the edition of this choral work, where sherry is not the only protagonist; but there is fidelity regarding its origin, since its purchase is collected in our city, and all the Jerez wine was certified by Alonso de Cabra, Jerez jury at that time ”.

The work, presented a few days ago at the Regulatory Council and dedicated to Santiago Lledó, is divided into three parts: the first and main, the study by Dr. Borrego Plá; the second, the detailed and careful transcription made by the young palaeographer Encarnación Murillo Román; and a last one, an index table with the more than 600 people that are mentioned in the document, with the data available in each case –birth, origin, profession,… – which also includes the express allusions to the wines and the wine of Jerez, carried out in this case by the journalist Sonia Arnáiz del Bosque.

The book can be purchased through the Xerez Regulatory Council.