Columbus's expedition, sponsored by Isabella and Ferdinand, makes landfall in the Bahamas, initiating sustained European contact with the Americas.
On 12 October 1492, after more than two months at sea, Christopher Columbus's expedition sighted land and made landfall on an island in the Bahamas, commonly identified as San Salvador. Columbus named the island in honor of the Christian faith and claimed it for the Crown of Castile, planting a royal banner bearing Isabella and Ferdinand's insignia.
This landfall represents one of the most consequential moments in world history: the beginning of sustained contact between Europe and the Americas. Though Norse explorers had reached North America centuries earlier, Columbus's voyage, uniquely financed and authorized by Isabella, initiated a permanent and transformative connection between the hemispheres, leading to the Columbian Exchange of peoples, goods, diseases, and ideas.
For Isabella, the news of this landfall, which reached the Spanish court in early 1493, validated her patronage and cemented her legacy as the sovereign whose backing enabled the European encounter with the New World. She subsequently took a direct interest in the treatment of indigenous peoples, later issuing instructions intended to protect them from enslavement, though these were unevenly enforced by colonial administrators. The event marks the opening chapter of Spain's vast overseas empire, built upon the foundations Isabella and Ferdinand established in 1492.