Almost entirely surrounded by the sea, the Iberian Peninsula witnessed voyages that would change the face of the known world forever. Travellers crossed the Mediterranean and Atlantic, undertook journeys to Mecca and the Holy Land, to the Near and Far East, to Europe and Africa. In 1492, the New World was discovered when Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, and in 1500 Brazil was claimed for the Portuguese by a fleet heading for India commanded by the diplomat Pedro Álvares Cabral. Travel writers from Iberia departed from a place with a fluid geographical and cultural identity in its own right. Playing host over the course of its history to people of different ethnicities, religions, and languages, Iberia has always been a place of cultural interchange and political flux. Travel writing is also a key part of medieval Iberia’s rich narrative tradition in which it presents universal and particular experiences which are contingent on the delicate relationship between fact and fiction.