“…He was the first European to set foot on the land of the Empire of Tawantinsuyu, the first mayor of the city founded by the Spanish conquerors upon the Inca capital of Cusco, and the first conquistador to cross the inaccessible peaks of the Andes, traversing the formidable mountain range from west to east, and entering the Amazon jungle…”
Pedro de Candia, Peter the Cretan, a key associate of Francisco Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, stands out among the Greeks who took part in the discovery and exploration of the Americas.
What made Pedro follow Pizarro, what did he face upon reaching Peru, how did he act during the events that followed, what role did he play in the entire enterprise—and ultimately, how did a Cretan become a legend in both the Old and the New World?
In this book by Charalambos Korakas, Greek ambassador to Spain and Peru and an expert on Spanish culture, based on historical sources, we follow the Cretan conquistador’s journey across his travels.
The narrative transports us to the era of the discovery of the New World and makes us witnesses to the epoch-making events during which an entire empire—that of the Inca—was brought to an end.
