Uruguay honors Ferdinand Magellan on the 500th anniversary of his arrival to the south of the American continent, according to an article by Plenglish.

In line with this, a ceremony was held where National authorities and from Colonia department unveiled a plaque on the banks of the La Plata and Uruguay rivers, the territory that he visited which was completed later by Juan Sebastian Elcano to find a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Top country officials including Interim Tourism Minister Benjamin Liberoff, along with the director of the Decentralization Office for Planning and Budget, Pedro Apezteguia, and Colonia Intendant Napoleon Gardiol, graced the ceremony.

According to an article by History, Magellan set sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In September 20, 1519, he led five ships and 270 men in a voyage to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a strait that would take him to the Pacific.

Uruguay is one of the countries that Magellan visited before arriving in the east using the western route, now called the Magellan Route on what was recorded the First Voyage Around the World.

Magellan landed on the shores of Colonia between January 16 and 20, 1520. After which, he anchored his ships off the San Gabriel Peninsula and placed a wooden cross in Punta de San Pedro, before setting sails up the Uruguay River to the Negro River.

The voyage of Magellan yielded many breakthroughs: he placed the Pacific Ocean in the maps which has then been fully navigated for the first time, as well as the Strait that connected the two big oceans in the planet, the Atantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. For four centuries, the route was used to connect the East and the West through the sea, the only possible route used by ships until the construction of the Panama Canal in the 20th century. First circumnavigation around the world also valuably contributed to the historical background of the voyage and in the consequences it had in the development of several civilizations, particularly linking different cultures and civilizations, providing exchanges and achievements in commerce, scientific knowledge and cultural, artistic and religious practices.

Many scholars say that the first globalization of the world started in that moment. Also, for the first time people became aware of multiculturalism, empirically shown as the diversity of people and cultures that made contact with each other. This was evident in the accounts of Italian scholar and explorer Antonio Pigafetta, who wrote a day by day record of the befallen events throughout the voyage.

Magellan never made it back to Spain to personally report his accomplishments after being killed in the Philippines in April 1521. While he is considered a hero in Spain, people of the Philippines, a country which was under the Spanish rule for more than three centuries, know him as the voyager who fell to his death at the hands of a Filipino hero, Lapu-Lapu.

Among the geographical locations included in the Magellan Route are situated in the countries, Uruguay, Argentina, Brasil, Cabo Verde, Chile, Indonesia, Philipines Portugal, and Spain.