A Spanish king last visited Malta in 1927 and not 400 years ago as the foreign affairs minister said in a radio interview last Sunday.
Foreign minister Tonio Borg said that Spanish King Juan Carlos will be visiting the Maltese islands by the end of this year and that the last visit to Malta by a Spanish king took place around 400 years ago.
Historian Charles Dalli said it is well documented that Alfonso V of Aragon visited Malta in 1432 on his way to attack the North African island of Djerba. The documents relating to his presence in Malta have been published by Prof. S. Fiorini in Volume 1: Palermo State Archives 1400-1459, Documentary Sources of Maltese History of the University of Malta Press.
This was not the only visit by a Spanish monarch. Alfonso XIII visited Malta in 1927. He lost his throne four years later in 1931 with the Second Spanish Republic.
The Spanish embassy in Malta also confirmed this and added that in 1432 King Alfonso V of Aragón lived several months in the city of Mdina, recovering from the war in Naples.
The Maltese falcon, on which the famous Humphrey Bogart film was based, is the bird which the Knights and the people of Malta sent every year to the Holy Roman Emperor and his descendants, the Kings of Spain, as a sign of their continuing fealty. The Maltese were subjects of Spain before the Knights came and continued so even under the Knights.
The rent, which the Order had to pay for the group of islands, was indeed a falcon but a live one – in the Bogart film the falcon is a gem encrusted statuette – that was to be presented to the Spanish King annually on All-Saints Day.
In 2005 an elaborate and colourful ceremony was held in Vittoriosa and commemorated the 475th anniversary of the cession of the island of Malta to the Knights of St John by Emperor Charles V on 24 March 1530.
Meanwhile, in view of tKing Juan Carlos’s visit later on this year, Maltese historians Antonio Espinoza Rodriguez and Nicholas Depiro are planning to publish an article featuring visits by Spanish monarchs to Malta.