First plane to fly from Europe to Latin America: Its 95-year journey

A FIRST for two continents, not just for Spain, this month marks the 95th anniversary of a journey that now takes place dozens of times a day without incident, celebration or welcome parties beyond those strictly family- or friend-related.

In these times of standard check-in, security and passport-control procedures as thousands of daily passengers hop on and off planes between Spain and Latin America, knowing the drill, settling in their reclining seats with blankets, eye-pads, iPads and either dread or eager anticipation at the knowledge the food will turn up on the usual trolley within an hour or so, it is easy to forget that, within the lifetimes of thousands still with us today, this would have been impossible – not just for the non-wealthy, but for anyone.

The Plus Ultra, manufactured in Spain and Italy, made its maiden flight on January 22, 1926 from the very same town from which Christopher Columbus set off on his epic, historical adventure in 1492, in the very same direction: Palos de la Frontera, Huelva province, to the first mass of land directly due south-west over the Atlantic.

Columbus is believed to have struck ground, after Huelva, in the Dominican Republic capital of Santo Domingo, but the Plus Ultra continued on past the equator 414 years later, grazing the runway for the last time on its longest-ever journey on February 10, 1926.

Now languishing in a museum in Luján, in the State of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Plus Ultra is undergoing an intensive restoration process and, even though it is unlikely to fly again, is expected to look, very soon, as good as it did when it first left its hangar on a trip that was fraught with excitement and terror for all those involved – more than anyone, for the pilots – given that literally anything could have gone wrong, and very easily so.

City shutdown, throbbing streets: Thrilling, but also a source of personal hope

'The streets were exploding' in the Argentine capital as crowds gathered to witness history – in fact, on February 9, 1926, locals were already camping out under the stars, spending a balmy high-summer night looking out for the plane due to land in their city at any time the next day, says pilot Santiago Garibotti.

Of course, he is not speaking from personal experience. Even if the original flying men (they were definitely men; this was a given in 1926) had been aged just 18 at the time, they would not be alive today. This would make them 113 years old, and the oldest man alive on earth at present – coincidentally, also Spanish – is Saturnino de la Fuente García, born on February 8, 1909, or 112 years and two weeks ago.

Garibotti, also, has 'only' been a pilot for 35 years, with his career starting in the year of the diamond anniversary of the Plus Ultra's transatlantic flight.

But he is one of the aviation historians most closely involved with this pioneering plane today, being part of the conservation team at the Luján Transport Museum.

And it was not just a feat of aircraft engineering, Garibotti explains: It also had a very personal impact on those watching from either side of the pond. Since the days of the colonisation at the end of the 15th century, and at an even greater rate throughout the first half of the 20th century, Spanish and Italian immigrants had been flocking to Argentina and the rest of Latin America in search of a new and better life – but had always done so on long, arduous boat crossings, where surviving on-board conditions was not guaranteed.

Basically, if you emigrated between Spain and Latin America, in either direction, it was unlikely you were coming back.

Yet the Plus Ultra paved the way for a relatively-near – in historical terms, anyway – future in which not only could migrants change their mind after a week or so, but if they didn't, they could still head back to the family nest for Christmas and other festivities, and non-migrants could pop across to either region for a holiday. Hopes of easier, cheaper, more feasible return trips, family reunions, and periodic visits were aroused by this momentous breakthrough in transport technology.

Also, it was key to Spain's own future, reputation and morale. By 1926, the last of its colonies had long since become lost, each one gradually declaring independence over the previous century or so and dramatically shrinking the nation's wealth and global relevance, Garibotti explains.

“It was a way of 'shutting up' those who thought Spain was backward and poor – they did this partly to raise the Spanish self-esteem,” he reveals.

As well as the civilian crowds on the shores, the arrival of the Plus Ultra was celebrated hugely in popular culture. Tango master Carlos Gardel wrote the song La Gloria del Águila ('The Eagle's Glory') a few years later, with lyrics that spoke of how the Plus Ultra set off 'watching the heavens' on its journey to the 'city of the Plata', of how 'the entire globe shuddered' and 'excitement was unleashed everywhere'.

In a sadly ironic twist of fate, soon after the song was released, Gardel himself lost his life in an air crash in 1935.

Six refuelling stops, 60-hour crossing and in-flight mechanical works

Eerily, one of the four crew on board the Plus Ultra was none other than the brother of a man who would thrust Spain into decades of poverty, repression, cruelty, genocide, war and turmoil, sparking even more emigration to Latin America. Ramón Franco led the flight project, financed partly by the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera – who reigned from 1923 to 1930 – and partly by King Alfonso XIII, husband of Queen Victoria of England's granddaughter Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg and great-grandfather of Spain's current monarch, King Felipe VI.

Along with the brother of the future dictator General Francisco Franco were Captain Julio Ruiz de Alda, Lieutenant Juan Manuel Durán, and mechanic Pablo Rada.

The Plus Ultra left its fifth occupant, photographer Leopoldo Alonso, behind in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the first of its six refuelling stops on a 10,270-kilometre crossing that would take a total of 60 hours – more than twice the time it would now take to fly from the same departure point as the Plus Ultra to Australia.

After its first 'layover' in the Canary Islands, the craft would make pit-stops in the west-African islands of Cape Verde, still under Portuguese rule at the time, in its capital of Praia (Santiago Island), then in three Brazilian cities – Fernando de Noronha, Recife and Rio de Janeiro – and finally in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo, before it reached Buenos Aires.

It was the first flight between Europe and the south Atlantic made with just one aircraft – although not the first complete air journey; this is widely held to have been in 1922, when Portuguese nationals Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral flew to South America, albeit via three separate aeroplanes.

Naturally, as a début crossing, the Plus Ultra flight did not avoid technical problems en route, although the crew managed to resolve them 'on the hoof' and, often, against all odds.

Just in case they couldn't, two boats crossed the ocean beneath it, escorting it on every leg of the trip.

Going postal: Where the Plus Ultra went next

The crew got a heroes' welcome at every port in South America where it landed, in three different countries, although more so than ever in Argentina – shops and factories had shut for the day so nobody would have to miss the landing by being at work, and the aircraft's occupants were received with full honours at the presidential residence, the Casa Rosada ('Pink House') by national leader Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear before making a tour of the country's inland towns and cities.

This was the final long-haul flight the Plus Ultra would undertake, as well as its first. Although Ramón Franco was keen to carry on flying it across other parts of the American continent, King Alfonso XIII opted to donate the craft to Argentina, where it was used for a few more years as a mail delivery vessel.

“It reached the Enrique Udaondo Provincial Museographic Complex when it stopped being used, when the Armed Forces decided to donate it in 1934,” explains the centre's current manager Viviana Mallol.

“Udaondo, the museum's founder, was a pioneer in acquiring pieces like this.

“Just talking about it gives me goosebumps. I'd have loved to have been around to experience that moment when it touched down, totally changing history for the world and, especially, for communication and travel.”

The Dornier Wal hydroplane, with its 22.5-metre wing-span and 17.2 metres in length, was briefly transported to Spain in the 1980s for a complete restoration and for a replica to be made; this is still in the Cuatro Vientos Air Museum in Madrid, where it was first unveiled nearly 40 years ago.

After this, it was returned to Argentina, where a later restoration project started about a year ago, coinciding with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Garibotti and fellow pilots Cristián Gazali and Reinero Barral volunteered to undertake the job for free.

“We gave it a bit of a repaint here and there where it was peeling, always keeping it to the same colour as the original, and carried out a full clean and general smartening-up,” reveals Garibotti.

“Of course, it doesn't fly any more. The engines haven't been switched on for decades, but it's still in great condition, visually.”

What happened to the ill-fated crew

Most of the Plus Ultra crew did not live long after their historic expedition. Durán perished in an air crash soon after returning to Spain from landing the Plus Ultra, Ramón Franco was killed in combat during a flight in 1938, when he was a pilot in the Civil War, and Ruiz de Alda was shot by militant anarchist firing squad at the start of the conflict in 1936.

It was only Rada who lived to what was, at the time, considered 'old age' – he passed away in 1969, the same year as Alfonso XIII's widow Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg; she was 81 and Rada, who supported the Republicans on the opposite side from Ramón Franco's dictatorial brother, was 77.

His own survival despite where his loyalties lie in the post-war fascist régime was probably only assured by the fact he had emigrated to Venezuela in 1939; after three decades in exile and now seriously ill, he returned to Madrid to see out his final weeks.

None of them survived long enough to see a day when it would take nearly as long to drive from Palos de la Frontera to Madrid than it would to fly from Madrid to Buenos Aires, or to see the craft they piloted brought back to gleaming health, but residents in or visitors to either of these two cities can see it for them, the original at the museum in Luján and the exact copy at the Cuatro Vientos Air Museum, and marvel at a forgotten but once-huge chapter in travel history.