This week marks 525 years since the world’s most famous navigator, far from glory, was hauled before the Spanish Crown in chains. We all carry some misconceptions about Christopher Columbus (Spanish people never use that name – they call him ‘Cristobal Colon‘). Though he handed a vast new continent to the Spanish Crown, making Spain the world’s mightiest nation, he himself was Italian. READ MORE:The Spanish men who flocked to the New World saw Columbus as different – Spanish wasn’t his first language, and there were whispers he was a converso, a Jew secretly clinging to his faith. When Bobadilla’s ship reached Cuba, Columbus boarded to greet him.