The day that 40 soldiers of the Spanish Armada defeated 1000 Japanese samurai

The figure of the samurai, the warriors of the ancient Japanese empire, is enveloped in an authentic halo of legend that shows how men and almost impossible to defeat. However, there are no invincibles, but they were defeated by the Spanish army.

This episode is very unknown in history and the occurrence in 1580 when the Spanish governor in the Philippine Islands, Don Gonzalo de Ronquillo, had a great success in the future, there was a harassment and looting of the indigenous Filipinos in the province of Luzon , area under Spanish administrative protection.

Before this situation, Ronquillo sent to Luzon the Captain of the Armada Juan Pablo Carrión, commanding a flotilla composed of seven boats and several dozen Marines of the Tercios de Mar of the Spanish Navy.

The objective was to expel the fierce Japanese pirates, who turned out to be fearsome samurai warriors.

After winning a first battle, in front of a ship that will sail through the area, the Japanese will send a fleet of ten ships for the Spanish. However, after several combats, both on land and maritime, the Spanish forces managed to defeat and expel the Japanese from the Philippines.

These battles represent the only historical evidence of a confrontation between the Europeans and the samurai. From this episode, the Japanese traditional story tells that their warriors were defeated by demons, half fish, lizards, arrived in great and strange black ships. These creatures came out as barbarians from the sea and attacking them both on land and at sea was a dangerous and almost suicidal issue.

Since then the samurai called the Spanish marines with lizard fish, in recognition of the audacity with which they had fought and won in the fighting of Cagayan.