Origin of the name Montevideo

Let’s talk about the origin of the name Montevideo. There are two main theories about why the colonisers chose it. The first comes from the Portuguese: legend has it that as one of their sailors approached the coast, he exclaimed “Monte vide eu!”, which roughly means “I see a mountain!” in old Portuguese. The second theory leans more toward the Spanish version: when the explorers arrived, they supposedly noted that they had reached the sixth hill, traveling from east to west. In Spanish, that would be “Monte 6, de Este a Oeste” — with the number six written in Roman numerals, like “VI”. And over time, that curious little note may have become the city’s name: Montevideo. Either way, the fact that both Spanish and Portuguese roots are tied up in the city’s name isn’t just a coincidence. When the Spanish Crown officially founded Montevideo in 1726 and built a fort here, it made a clear statement to Portugal : this land is ours, as laid out in the Treaty of Tordesillas. Never heard of it? You’re not the only one, but it shaped Latin America as we know it and defined who got to colonise what. Signed in 1494, the treaty divided the “New World” between Spain and Portugal. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, the Catholic Monarchs and King John II of Portugal decided to split the globe. Francis I of France famously asked to see the clause that excluded him from this little arrangement, but of course, there wasn’t one. The Pope had approved an imaginary line across the Atlantic, west of the Cape Verde Islands. Everything discovered to the east of that line would go to Portugal; everything to the west would go to Spain. And that’s why Brazil, huge and in the middle of the continent, is the only country in South America that speaks Portuguese. Uruguay, meanwhile, sits right along that border, and that’s what the Spanish were trying to underscore by building a fortress here. The Treaty of Tordesillas allowed Spain to rise as the first global empire, drawing unimaginable wealth from gold and silver mined in Mexico and Peru. But the agreement didn’t exactly hold up. Brazil now extends far beyond the line. And as for France, England, and the Netherlands, they certainly didn’t say, “Oh no, it’s off limits, we won’t go there. By the 17th century, Spain and Portugal, both in decline, could only watch as new colonial empires claimed chunks of territory they thought were already theirs. There you have it, a quick historical recap always comes in handy!