Calle de Andrés de Urdaneta
Recalls Andrés de Urdaneta, a 16th-century cosmographer and Augustinian friar who discovered the return route across the Pacific from the Philippines to America.
Andrés de Urdaneta, a Basque sailor and Augustinian friar, solved the problem that had resisted for decades: how to sail back from the Philippines to America. Ships knew how to run west with the trade winds, but the return against the wind was impossible. In 1565 he climbed north across the Pacific until he caught the Kuroshio current, which carried him through high latitudes to California, reaching Acapulco that October.
That detour, the tornaviaje, opened the regular line between Manila and Acapulco that sustained trade between Asia and America for more than two centuries. It is no accident that the street sits in Legazpi: the district gathers the names of that same crossing, and the navigator ended up a few steps from the captain he served as pilot.