Andrés de San Martín: the Spanish Cartographer Who Discovered the Malvinas

“He was the first to see them. And he drew them so they would never be forgotten.”

This text revives a story silenced for centuries: that of the first European to sight, describe, and chart the Malvinas Islands. He did so in 1520, in the name of the Crown of Castile, long before the British had even imagined their existence. That map, lost for centuries and rediscovered during the Malvinas War, changed forever the documentary foundation of Argentina’s claim.

Sometimes history falls asleep. It nestles among old papers, gathers the dust of archives, hides in a fold of parchment as if afraid to speak the truth. Then, on any given day, someone lifts a page, and the impossible takes form. That is how Andrés de San Martín was brought back to life — the nautical scholar who mapped the Malvinas when the world was still a riddle wrapped in salt.

Andrés de San Martín. Does the name ring a bell? Likely not. There’s no street named after him in the city centre, nor a school that bears his name. He is no textbook hero, no equestrian statue model. Yet this man, likely born in Seville towards the end of the 15th century and dead — whether from malaria or betrayal — on an unnamed Philippine island, was the first to put the Malvinas on a map. And not out of fancy, but with coordinates. With calculations. With his eyes fixed on the stars and a steady hand on the sextant. He was one of the most accurate astronomers of his age, capable of calculating geographical longitude with minimal error. A forgotten genius of cosmography.

San Martín joined Magellan’s expedition in 1519, a journey ordered by the Spanish crown to find a route to the Pacific and reach the Moluccas. Among the daring crew were the obstinate Portuguese Magellan and the quiet but precise Spaniard — Andrés de San Martín. His gift wasn’t with steel, but with the skies: he calculated eclipses, conjunctions, latitudes and longitudes.

He was the fleet’s chief pilot, astronomer, and cartographer — knowledge as valuable as the sword, until the mutiny at Puerto San Julián in April 1520. He was accused of sympathising with the mutineers, perhaps due to his professional ties with pilot Esteban Gómez, one of the ringleaders.

Esteban Gómez, a seasoned Portuguese pilot in Castilian service, was among those who rose up against Magellan. His association with San Martín — though never proven — was enough to make him a suspect. Magellan ordered his arrest and had him tortured by the strappado, a torment involving being hoisted by the arms tied behind the back. San Martín survived, but his health was irreparably damaged.

Later, during the stopover in Cebu (Philippines), he fell gravely ill and died in 1521, taking with him part of the expedition’s astronomical knowledge. Science, too, bleeds. And in this case, it also dies in silence.

While the Venetian chronicler Antonio Pigafetta meticulously recorded each day of the expedition, San Martín measured the world’s distances with an astronomer’s eyes. And so, in July 1520, as winter battered the Patagonian coast, the ship San Antonio — one of the five in the voyage — was sent south. It was captained by Álvaro de Mesquita, Magellan’s cousin. They sailed along the edge of the unknown, the sea writing names that had yet to be marked on charts. And on 28 July, they came upon an archipelago of cold and silence: the Malvinas. To them, they were the “Sansón” or “Islands of Giants.”

They landed on Isla Soledad, where birds circled like sentinels. There were no signs of human life — only cold land. With the precision of a watchmaker, San Martín pointed to the sky, measured and recorded: the first known map of the Malvinas, year 1520 — when Argentina had yet to forge its name. All this occurred within the jurisdiction recognised for the Crown of Castile by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, reinforcing the historical and legal claim to the territory.

As in all imperial conquests, the map was lost. The Portuguese took it to Lisbon after San Martín’s death, along with his notebooks. Oblivion did its work. Over the centuries, the Malvinas slipped into a cartographic limbo: they appeared with distorted names, or as mere dots. But in the traces left by Diego Gutiérrez, Pedro Reinel and Diego Ribero, the echoes of that excursion endured. San Martín remained anonymous in the maps, waiting to be reclaimed.

Sixteenth-century cartography wasn’t an exact science, but it was a high art. Cosmographers like San Martín, the Reinel family, or Sebastián Caboto worked from astronomical observations, navigators’ accounts, and not a few myths. Maps combined fact and fiction, but one precise measurement could open a world. And San Martín delivered one. Without marine chronometers or theodolites, only with his astrolabe and tables, he recorded a part of the planet still shrouded in mist.

That call came in 1982, as the world watched the South Atlantic explode on their televisions. France brought to light the Atlas de San Julián, a manuscript dated 1586, long forgotten in the National Library of Paris. There, among the parchments, emerged the chart: “Les isles de Sansón ou des Geantz”, located precisely where the Malvinas lie today. This document, of incalculable value, confirmed not only the Spanish discovery but also predated John Strong’s British sighting by over 150 years.

Rocher Gervais, a French curator, sent the discovery to Uruguayan scholar Rolando Laguarda Trías. On 14 June 1983, Laguarda Trías presented his study in Montevideo, entitled “Spanish Ship Discovers the Malvinas Islands in 1520”, based on analysis of the manuscript with curator Mireille Pastoureau. He wrote: “there is not the slightest shadow of doubt that the map depicts the Malvinas Islands.” In September of that year, the study was formally entered into the library of Argentina’s National Academy of Geography.

Laguarda Trías returned to Paris in August 1987 and personally photographed the map, confirming that the chart was accompanied by a text by André Thevet, who described it after interviewing a Portuguese pilot (likely Mesquita) in Lisbon in the 1560s. Thevet reproduced the coordinates in his book Le Grand Insulaire, strengthening the authenticity of the Spanish discovery.

This discovery was no mere anecdote. It provided historical ammunition for Argentina’s claim to sovereignty. Laguarda Trías and other scholars considered it “a firmer foundation for Argentina’s rights, as heir to Spain’s.” And it was no minor point: in 1982, Argentina was at war over the islands, and this evidence represented a powerful documentary legitimacy. As Laguarda Trías himself stated: “The islands, now the subject of diplomatic dispute, were first charted by a Spaniard who knew the sky better than he knew the maps.”

Since then, this work has been validated by historians and academic institutions across South America. In 2015, the National Academy of Geography commemorated the event in its Annals, with a chapter reinforcing the scientific legitimacy of the Spanish discovery of the Malvinas. According to the legal principle of uti possidetis iuris, newly independent republics inherited the territories that had belonged to colonial crowns. Thus, upon the dissolution of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, the Malvinas would have automatically become part of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.

The 1520 map ceased to be an old curiosity and became a key piece in modern geopolitical history. It not only proved that San Martín had charted the islands with precision five centuries before any British settlement, but also that his records were preserved and circulated across the European Atlantic from the late 1500s. Against any English claim, this document remains irrefutable evidence: the Malvinas were discovered, observed, and mapped by a Spaniard — and this act predates all subsequent claims.

The 1982 discovery and Laguarda Trías’s research sparked debates in museums, universities, and diplomatic circles. Of course, there were critics — some questioned the document chain. But the majority of historians regarded it as “the most solid and rigorous documented effort to bring a forgotten discovery into the present.”

Today, Andrés de San Martín is no longer a shadow. He is a symbol that history is written in fine strokes, with compasses, latitudes, and longitudes. His 1520 cartography, rescued from silence in 1982, not only revives 16th-century scientific memory — it also stands as a mute, irrefutable witness to Argentina’s sovereignty over the Malvinas.

In a world that disputes maps with drones and international treaties, the figure of a man with a sextant reminds us that sovereignty is also written in ink, with patience and with truth. And that some gestures, like San Martín’s, take five centuries to receive justice. Perhaps, on a clear night above the cold southern seas, the shadow of that forgotten pilot still lingers in the stars — the man who once measured the world to stop others from stealing it.

Postscript: That a map forgotten in Paris for four centuries would become a key piece of a sovereignty claim says more about history than a thousand speeches. Because sometimes truth doesn’t shout — it waits. And those who know how to read an old parchment can see in it the roots of an entire nation. Today, his map does not speak only in libraries. It can — and must — speak in the international forums where the fate of peoples is debated.

Bibliography:

Laguarda Trías, Rolando. Nave española descubre las Islas Malvinas en 1520. Montevideo, 1983.
Thevet, André. Le Grand Insulaire. Manuscrito del siglo XVI.
Academia Nacional de Geografía (Argentina). Anales y Boletines, ediciones de 1983 y 2015.
Hervé, Roger (Rocher Gervais). Découverte des Îles Malouines en 1520, Biblioteca Nacional de Francia, 1982.
Ramos, Lucio. Cartografía y poder en el Atlántico Sur. Editorial Dunken, 2010.