With a new stamp printed on wood paper, simulating the material with which the ships were built, Correos continues one more year making known the Discoverers of Oceania.
This year, the stamp is dedicated to Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón, navigator and discoverer.
There is not much biographical information about Saavedra Cerón, although it is known that he was a relative of Hernán Cortés, with whom he resided in Mexico when the conquest of Tenochtitlan ended.
His few records are documented in the order given by Charles V to Cortes to send the ships he had built on the Pacific coast through the South Sea to the Spices in order to find out what had happened to the nao Trinidad, under the command of Gomez de Espinosa, of the expedition of Magellan and Elcano, as well as to verify the existence of any other island and if it had spices or other riches.
Saavedra Cerón began his expedition on October 31, 1527 from Zihuatanejo, Zacatula (in the current Mexican state of Guerrero), with one hundred and ten men in three ships: Florida, Santiago and Espíritu Santo.
After four months of navigation and the loss of two ships (Espiritu Santo and Santiago), the expedition members embarked on the Florida and arrived at the island of Mindanao in the Philippine archipelago, from where they set course for the Moluccas.
Also in Tidore, when they arrived, they discovered other Spaniards harassed by the Portuguese.
When they tried to return to New Spain with a cargo of spices, especially cloves, the meteorology of the Pacific Ocean, with the adverse winds and currents, forced them to return to safe harbor; although before they landed in the islands of Misory and Almirantazgo, they passed through the Carolinas and the Marianas and discovered the great island of New Guinea.
In May 1529 he tried again to attempt the return voyage, failing at the Hawaiian Islands (Table Islands for the Spaniards), dying there in the middle of the ocean.
