27. Letter from Hernando de Morales in Lisbon, to Simón Ruiz in Medina del Campo

This letter announces the arrival of luxury goods from the Orient, in this case a richly carved wooden table from India and a cloth quilt from China. It describes in detail how they are consigned and packed, wrapped in waxed cloth to protect them from rain and humidity. Oriental goods (ivory, porcelain, jades, among others) did only not arrive in Spain by the Manila Galleon route (which ran eastwards across the Pacific towards Central America, and then on to Europe across the Atlantic), but also travelled – as this letter attests – along the Portuguese route known as the ‘Carreira da India’, which went from Goa to Lisbon across the Indian Ocean and then northwards along the West African coast towards Europe. This Portuguese route used to import goods like these to Spain with particular frequency between 1580 and 1640, the years when the Spanish and Portuguese crowns were united.

(Antonio Sánchez del Barrio)