Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India It is often regarded as the most important work of Portuguese literature. The work celebrates the discovery of a sea route to India by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama. King Manuel did not share that opinion. Keeping the D. João II plan, he went ahead to equip the ships and chose Vasco da Gama as the leader of this expedition and the captain of the armada. According to the original plan, John II had appointed his father, Stephen da Gama, to head the armada; but by the time of implementing the plan, both were deceased. Portuguese were after spices,
Spanish and Portuguese Jews Spanish and Portuguese Jews Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, are a distinctive sub-group of Iberian Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the immediate generations following the forced expulsion of unconverted Jews from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. Although the 1492 and 1497 expulsions of unconverted Jews from Spain and Portugal were separate events from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions (which was established over a decade earlier in 1478), they were ultimately linked, as the Inquisition eventually also led to the fleeing out of