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( Miguel López de Legazpi)
Miguel López de Legazpi[1] (1502 – August 20, 1572), also known as El Adelantado (The Governor) and El Viejo (The Elder), was a Spanish conquistador who established one of the first European settlements in the East Indies, and the Pacific Islands in 1565. After obtaining peace with various indigenous tribes, López de Legazpi made the Philippine Islands the capital of the Spanish East Indies in 1571.[1] Born in 1502, Miguel López de Legazpi was the youngest son of Don Juan Martínez López de Legazpi and Doña Elvira de Gurruchátegui. He was born to a noble family and lived in the small town of Zumárraga, in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa in Spain. Between 1526 and 1527, López de Legazpi worked as a councilor in the municipal government of his home town. In 1528, after Hernán Cortés had established settlements in Mexico, López de Legazpi went to Mexico (New Spain) to start a new life. This was due to the death of his parents and his dissatisfaction with his eldest sibling, who inherited all of the family fortune. In Tlaxcala, he worked with Juan Garcés and Juan's sister, Isabel Garcés. López de Legazpi would go on to marry Isabel and have nine children with her. Isabel died in the mid 1550s. Between the periods of 1528 and 1559, he worked as a leader of the financial department council and as the civil governor of Mexico City. He was later commissioned by the viceroy, Luis de Velasco, in early 1564, to lead an expedition in the Pacific Ocean, to find the Spice Islands where the previous explorers Ferdinand Magellan, and Ruy López de Villalobos had landed in 1521 and 1543, respectively. The expedition was ordered by King Philip II of Spain, after whom the islands were eventually named. The viceroy died in July of that year, but the Audiencia and López de Legazpi completed the preparations for the expedition. On the early morning of November 21, 1564, armed with five ships and 500 soldiers, he sailed from the port of Barra de Navidad, New Spain, in what is now Jalisco state, Mexico.
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