ABSTRACT
Perhaps because his celebrated circumnavigation of the globe was financed by Castile, it is often forgotten that Magallanes, the first man capable of organising this extraordinary feat, was a subject of the King of Portugal. This project was an example of the high degree of integration and overlapping between the various societies of the Iberian peninsula, a characteristic found not only in the oceanic expansion but also in the economic growth that has often been underestimated by historians. The following pages are an attempt to bring out these ties as well as the exact nature of the expansion and the subsequent crisis.
