Spain in Micronesia: San Ignacio de Agaña as the First City in Oceania

Abstract

The paper remarks that the Palau, Marianas and Carolines archipelagos in the Pacific were, until sold to Germany in 1899, Spain's last overseas possessions. Having plotted the history of the Marianas from their discovery by Magellan and Elcano in 1521 through to the arrival of the Jesuit Diego Luis de San Vítores in 1668 with whom Spanish sovereignty there could be said to have really established itself, the author mentions that it was the island of Guam that most thoroughly experienced Spain's presence given that it was the only safe watering point available for the Acapulco galleon. Urbanistic activity was at best scant, as much for reasons of terrain as population, the village of the Marianas holding to their original native character with but few and infrequent buildings laid out upon an incipient ground plan, these keeping to the model to be found in the White Villages of Southern Spain. San Ignacio de Agana is an exception, being for long enough not only the first but the only city in Oceania. Until its destruction in 1944, it embodied a civilisation born of both fusion and cross-breeding, its lay out being structured around that open space which was the Plaza de España, keeping in this to the canons laid down in the Ley de Indias. The paper finishes by remarking the Spain's political presence in the Carolines was for but some few years at the end of the 19'h C. when two naval bases were set up after 1886, one, Santa Cristina, on Yap, the other, Santiago de la Ascension, on Ponape.