MEDITERRANEAN REDNECK

 PENSACOLA, TRISTAN DE LUNA AND A SAILOR WHO LONGED FOR HIS TOWN

JOHN J POLO 

  Tristan de Luna was born in Borobia, Spain, to a noble family. He came to New Spain, and was sent on an expedition to colonize Florida in 1559. In August of that year, he established an ephemeral colony at modern-day Pensacola, the earliest multi-year European settlement in the continental United States. The party anchored in Pensacola Bay (known as "Ochuse" since the expeditions of Francisco Maldonado during the 1539-1543 expedition of Hernando de Soto) and set up the settlement called Santa Maria de Ochuse during late August and September 1559. Turning the hands of time backward along the dial of Floridian history, we find chronicled in the year 1559- or according to some writers 1553-the birth of an infant city on the shores of Ochees, a beautiful deep water bay, which offered safe anchorage to a fleet sailing northward under the command of one Tristan De Luna. One of those adventurous Spaniards who, following the ignis fatuus of all Spanish explorers of the gulf-the fabulous golden stores of a country to the northward, had entered the harbor in search of a landing place. But something changed the history. One of the sailors on board told Tristan de Luna that those lands were not America, which was the town where he was born in Spain, because it was identical to his town "Peniscola," a small seaport of Spain. At that time the explorers were in the habit of putting religious names to their discoveries. In honor of that sailor Tristan de Luna decided the name of that place would be "Santa Maria de Peniscola " (St. Mary of Peniscola) later abbreviated to Pensacola. Peniscola is a Latin word meaning peninsula. How the beauty of its scenery must have impressed him we can judge from our own appreciation, dulled as it is by familiarity. Tangled native vine and creeper, stately growths of oak and pine, with here and there a flowering shrub, lent a dark and brilliant background to the shimmering blue of its placid waters. Here the lurking Indian aborigines watched the followers of De Luna disembark, and here, somewhere in the neighborhood of Barrancas, De Luna planted a colony-the primitive Pensacola.

No record is found of life in this settlement. Peopled of a class of men better versed in the use of arms than in implements of toil unsupported by the parent colony; the ill-nourished settlement dwindled until only a miserable remnant of the expedition remained to follow De Luna. He was recalled after two years of ineffectual attempts to establish a permanent settlement on the shores of Ochees, the Indian appellation of the beautiful bay upon which Tristan De Luna afterwards bestowed the name Santa Marie in accordance with the custom that prevailed among Spanish explorers of designating their discoveries by titles of religious significance. The name Pensacola is supposed by some to be a transposition of "Peniscola".

I live in a town that is 9 miles from Peniscola. My mother's family comes from Peniscola. I have asked people who have been to Pensacola if the geographical similarity of both cities is true. Everyone has told me that, yes, when I go to Peniscola ,Pensacola always comes to mind. When Greg Kalof from Miami and Doug Nash from NC (past Cracker's editors) came to my town, I took them to visit Peniscola and explained this story to them. I think it's a way to be close to Florida, even if it's just a little story, but which deserves to be told. 

Pensacola, "The City of Five Flags", due to the five governments that have ruled it during its history: the flags of Spain, France, Great Britain, the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America. St. Augustine, Florida may have new competition for the title of oldest city in America. A new discovery out of the University of West Florida suggests that title could go to another Florida city: Pensacola. Researchers at the University of West Florida say they’ve proved Spanish Explorer, Tristan de Luna established his Spanish colony of Pensacola in August of 1559. That’s six years before St. Augustine, which claims it’s the oldest because it’s been continuously occupied.