Back in the sixties of the last century, the first time the author of this essay heard the word Formosa, he was a child whose house had just bought a black and white television. A report came out about a Chinese bombardment of a nearby island, and his father explained that it was the island of Formosa where the Chinese general who had lost the war against Mao had taken refuge, and was holding out there waiting for a chance to win back China. That image remained in his memory for a long time, until after twenty years he was able to give proper names, and a clear background, to those news items. Chiang Kai Chek was the general and president of the Republic of China who had been defeated by Mao Zedong in a civil war that ended in 1949, a war that had begun in a way in the early 1930s. The island that was bombarded was not Formosa itself, but Little Quemoy (Kinmen) a few kilometers from the mainland, but under Formosan control, which was punished every other day at specific times. That is to say, it was a theatrical action, of prestige, rather than war, after failing in the specific attempt to invade that island-fortress on two occasions.
By then, the Franco regime had good relations with Chiang Kai Chek’s nationalist China, for which reason it carried out military exchanges in which strategic places were visited. For example, generals like Agustín Muñoz Grandes went to visit Quemoy, while Taiwanese generals visited their counterpart Alcázar de Toledo, and even gave lectures at the Army High Staff School, like the one Wego Chiang (son of Chiang Kai Chek) gave in 1968 in the presence of Juan Carlos de Borbón. But they were not the only relationships. The Spanish embassy located in Taipei enjoyed great prestige, only behind that of the United States, because Ambassador Julio Larracoechea administered the scholarships that the Spanish government granted to Formosan students to go to Spain, although in many cases this country served as a springboard to go to the United States, which was the place where the select young people of the Formosan regime really wanted to settle.
But there were other types of contacts, for example, the China News Agency (CNA) of Formosa had made a news exchange agreement with the Spanish news agency Efe in 1951, and this is what explained the presence of those aforementioned television reports. Certainly, the two decades between the years 1952-1973 formed the golden age of Spain-Formosan relations, to the point that the ambassadors destined for Spain used to end up later as ministers of Foreign Affairs of Formosa, that is, of the Republic. of China, which is still the official name for Taiwan. This period ended with the realpolitik of Foreign Minister Gregorio López-Bravo who went on to recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1973, to the detriment of the Nationalist.
But the relations between Spain and Formosa had already existed, and also in an important way, since this island played an important role in the signing of the border boundary treaty between the kingdom of Spain and the empire of Japan, made in 1895. How was it is this possible? As early as the 17th century, Chinese immigrants began to arrive in Formosa, and the island became part of the Qing dynasty in 1683. Years later, during the first Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895), China was forced to cede Formosa to Japan, the island becoming a Japanese territory, whose development served as a colonial showcase for Japan until 1945. For what has been said, Japan became a border territory with the Philippines in 1895, for at least three years, that is, until the independence of this Spanish province in 1898. Consequently, Spain negotiated with Japan the border limits of the respective countries, fixing them on the central line of the Bashi channel, which still delimits the border between the Philippines and Taiwan today. Both conflicts meant that for a short time he was based in Formosa under consul Enrique Ortiz y Pi.
But there was still more. Not a few years earlier, in 1863, the Filipino barge La Soberana ran aground in Formosa, which ended up being looted by the natives of the island. Spain asked for compensation, then it was forgotten, but fourteen years later it even threatened to use force, or at least that’s how China sensed it, so this pretext served additionally for the Qing empire to give in in 1877 in its previous refusal to renegotiation of the first treaty with Spain, signed by Sinibaldo de Mas in 1864.
These events mentioned, important, but of isolated value, hide a greater reality in those relations between Spain and Taiwan. It is about the presence of Dominican missionaries, whose unknown history represents a deep and permanent interaction, sometimes conditioned by international geopolitics. The Dominicans ventured their arrival in the south of the island in 1859, a year before the Beijing treaties that regulated the missionary presence in China, after the Opium War. They missioned mainly with the aborigines of the island, more receptive than the Chinese themselves. At first they were involved in persecution, but nonetheless they built churches, such as the impressive mass of Wanjin, which is still standing today and which Taiwan preserves as one of the most outstanding examples of its architectural heritage. In turn, the letters that they regularly wrote to Manila and were published in El Correo Sino-Annamita are now a clear testimony, not only of their missionary vicissitudes, but also a great reflection of the popular, political and geographical life of the island, which it materialized in the great two-volume work of the Dominican José María Álvarez, Formosa historically and geographically considered, published in Barcelona in 1931.
Why were the Dominicans so interested in going to Formosa? For the simple reason that they had already been there in the 17th century, and that brings us to one of the most fascinating stories in Spain-Taiwan relations, that of the founding of the city of San Salvador by Spanish troops in 1626 in the north of Isla Hermosa, which is what the Spanish called it in parallel to the Portuguese nomenclature. The island played a geostrategic role of great importance in the relations between the Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch in the first third of the 17th century, which we are going to try to explain in a few words, although a book would be needed to do so. As is well known, forty years after Magellan’s odyssey, the Spanish managed to establish a regular annual galleon route between Acapulco and Manila, through which silk from China was basically exchanged for the silver that came from Acapulco to pay the Spanish officials and soldiers, who in turn invested mostly in the galleon trade. During the last decades of the 16th century, this did not present any technical problems, except those caused by eventual inclemencies during the trip, which under normal circumstances required three months to cross the Pacific from Acapulco to Manila and five months to return, or tornaviaje.
This did not come into conflict with the Portuguese factories such as Macao, and its capital Malacca, since these two Iberian powers were clear about the limits set in the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529). The problem came with the irruption of the Dutch as early as 1600, who gradually established themselves in Indonesia. These wanted to take over the Portuguese market, based on the previous break in relations between China and Japan, thus acting as a bridge between the two countries through Macao, a true intra-Asian trade. The VOC, or (Dutch) West India Company attempted to conquer Macao in 1622 for direct access to the Chinese market, but failed, establishing itself on the nearby Pescadores (Penghu) Islands, between China and Formosa. Two years later, the Chinese told them that they could not stay there and that, in any case, they should go further east to a larger island that was there, that is, the one called Formosa by the Portuguese. And they do it like that. One of the added reasons for being there was to cut the umbilical cord that linked the aforementioned trade between China and Manila. Manila reacted by putting a military base in the north of the island to counter that threat. The Dominicans found it wonderful, which is why they were also promoters of the project, since it allowed them to have a base close to Japan and China. In the first case they already had missions there, but the country had just closed hermetically to foreign presence and religion. In the case of China, Hermosa offered them a possible clandestine entry into the Fujian province, since Macao was banned from them by the Portuguese and the Jesuits. The Spanish were in Isla Hermosa for 16 years, until 1642, when they were thrown out by the Dutch. However, they left behind an impressive fort with four bastions, the church of Todos los Santos, with a solid foundation, and even some place names that still survive.
The author of this essay heard the word Taiwan for the first time in the eighties of the last century, as a reference place for textile production. The name was not yet familiar in Spain, but it found its way, so that the word Taiwan is now universally established in high-tech brands. On the other hand, the current Spanish presence in Taiwan refers to a field different from the military or missionary past, it includes Spanish teachers, who work in the four departments of this language on the island, as well as in many other departments. of foreign languages, which together will add up to more than 5,000 students of the language of Cervantes. A few Spanish university students go on exchange to Taiwan, and, on the contrary, many Taiwanese go to Spanish universities for exchanges. There is also a small presence, but of quality, in the liberal professions, artists, naval engineers, etc., and of course the brands Zara, Mango are present… CAF (Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles) even carried out the construction of the first phase of the Kaohsiung city tram, and there are many international competitions for high-level architectural projects obtained by Spanish architects. Undoubtedly, the Spanish Chamber of Commerce (ICEX) has contributed to all this, as well as the Vice Chancellery for Foreign Affairs dependent on Manila.
Lastly, and linking with the aforementioned history of the 17th century, there is an interesting collaboration between the University of Cantabria and the Tsing Hua University in an archaeological project that has recovered the aforementioned Dominican church of Todos los Santos, making this heritage a point of cultural reference for the city of Keelung, and for all of Taiwan.
José Eugenio Borao Mateo is professor of Spanish Culture at the National Taiwan University and author of several books on Spain-China-Taiwan relations.
