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guest line up.
Meet the voices behind the stories — every Friday, we release a new episode featuring inspiring guests from across Portugal and beyond, including artists, chefs, winemakers, musicians, historians, entrepreneurs, locals and expats.
Explore our diverse guest line-up and discover the people shaping Portuguese culture, food, travel, and daily life.
Columbus: A Portuguese Prince? Dr Manuel Rosa on His New Book.
Columbus: A Portuguese Prince? Dr Manuel Rosa on His New Book.
Historian Dr Manuel Rosa on 35 years of research, a vanished Polish king hiding in Madeira, and why the story of the Genoese weaver does not stand up.
Was Christopher Columbus a Portuguese prince born in Madeira? Dr Manuel Rosa on his new book, a vanished Polish king and a secret kept for centuries.
For more than five centuries, Christopher Columbus has been remembered as an Italian weaver from Genoa. Dr Manuel Rosa believes that story is wrong. In this episode, Justin West welcomes Dr Rosa back to Podcast Portugal to discuss his new book, Colombo – Um Príncipe Português, the culmination of 35 years of research and the first in which he commits fully to his conclusion: that the navigator was born in Madeira, the son of King Władysław III of Poland.
Dr Rosa revisits the Battle of Varna in 1444, where the young king was said to have died. Letters written in 1445 describe him as alive and well, and a later letter from a monk points to his survival. According to Dr Rosa, Władysław chose not to reclaim his throne, made a pilgrimage as penance for breaking a truce, and settled in Madeira under the name Henrique Alemão, where he was granted lands confirmed by the Portuguese crown. His disappearance allowed his brother Casimir to take the Polish throne, and the truth was kept hidden at the highest levels of European power to prevent civil war.
The conversation explores how the names Colón, Colombo and Columbus became confused, beginning with an error in Rome in 1493, and how nineteenth-century historians attached the navigator's life to a Genoese weaver of the same name. Dr Rosa argues that a weaver could never have married into the nobility, as Columbus did when he wed Filipa Moniz, nor risen to become admiral and viceroy. Growing up in Madeira, where villages were linked by sea and his father owned boats, the young heir would instead have learned navigation from childhood.
Dr Rosa sets out the documents behind his case, including archival letters, chronicles and a Lithuanian genealogy linking the Polish royal house to the Colón family. He also explains why, as heir to the thrones of Poland, Hungary and Lithuania, Columbus's true identity had to remain a secret, and previews his next book, which will examine the 1492 voyage as a covert Portuguese mission against Spain.
Colombo – Um Príncipe Português is available now in Portuguese from bookshops across Portugal, with an English edition still to be announced.
Historian Dr Manuel Rosa on 35 years of research, a vanished Polish king hiding in Madeira, and why the story of the Genoese weaver does not stand up.
Was Christopher Columbus a Portuguese prince born in Madeira? Dr Manuel Rosa on his new book, a vanished Polish king and a secret kept for centuries.
For more than five centuries, Christopher Columbus has been remembered as an Italian weaver from Genoa. Dr Manuel Rosa believes that story is wrong. In this episode, Justin West welcomes Dr Rosa back to Podcast Portugal to discuss his new book, Colombo – Um Príncipe Português, the culmination of 35 years of research and the first in which he commits fully to his conclusion: that the navigator was born in Madeira, the son of King Władysław III of Poland.
Dr Rosa revisits the Battle of Varna in 1444, where the young king was said to have died. Letters written in 1445 describe him as alive and well, and a later letter from a monk points to his survival. According to Dr Rosa, Władysław chose not to reclaim his throne, made a pilgrimage as penance for breaking a truce, and settled in Madeira under the name Henrique Alemão, where he was granted lands confirmed by the Portuguese crown. His disappearance allowed his brother Casimir to take the Polish throne, and the truth was kept hidden at the highest levels of European power to prevent civil war.
The conversation explores how the names Colón, Colombo and Columbus became confused, beginning with an error in Rome in 1493, and how nineteenth-century historians attached the navigator's life to a Genoese weaver of the same name. Dr Rosa argues that a weaver could never have married into the nobility, as Columbus did when he wed Filipa Moniz, nor risen to become admiral and viceroy. Growing up in Madeira, where villages were linked by sea and his father owned boats, the young heir would instead have learned navigation from childhood.
Dr Rosa sets out the documents behind his case, including archival letters, chronicles and a Lithuanian genealogy linking the Polish royal house to the Colón family. He also explains why, as heir to the thrones of Poland, Hungary and Lithuania, Columbus's true identity had to remain a secret, and previews his next book, which will examine the 1492 voyage as a covert Portuguese mission against Spain.
Colombo – Um Príncipe Português is available now in Portuguese from bookshops across Portugal, with an English edition still to be announced.
Colón, Not Columbus: Dr. Manuel Rosa on the 500-Year Identity Mystery Behind the Man Who “Discovered” America.
Colón, Not Columbus: Dr. Manuel Rosa on the 500-Year Identity Mystery Behind the Man Who “Discovered” America.
A printing error, a noble Portuguese marriage and decades of suppressed evidence: historian Manuel Rosa makes the case that Christopher Columbus was never who we were told he was.
Portuguese-American historian Dr. Manuel Rosa has spent thirty-five years challenging the accepted story of Christopher Columbus, and in this episode of Podcast Portugal he explains why the man history remembers as an Italian weaver was, in his view, never Italian at all. Rosa traces the confusion to a fifteenth-century printing error in Rome that sent non-Spanish historians searching for a “Colombo” in Italy, while Spain had always known the navigator by a different name entirely: Colón.
Central to Rosa’s research is the marriage of Colón to Filipa Moniz, a high-ranking Portuguese noblewoman and Commendadora of the Order of Santiago, whose family sat at the heart of the royal court. Rosa argues that such a union would have been unthinkable for a peasant or a foreign weaver, and that the marriage alone points to a man of noble standing whose true background had to be concealed rather than celebrated.
That concealment, Rosa contends, was deliberate and shared between the Portuguese and Spanish courts. His research points towards Colón being the son of a Polish king who vanished after the Battle of Varna in 1444, his real identity hidden behind a chosen name meaning “member of Christ.” It is a claim that has drawn fierce resistance from mainstream historians, many of whom, Rosa says, have dismissed his work without engaging with the documentary evidence behind it.
The conversation also explores the role of DNA testing in the search for the truth, from the 2003 tests on remains in Seville to a fresh round of studies in 2024 that ruled out the Italian, Portuguese royal and Jewish Catalan theories alike — without yet confirming any alternative. For Rosa, each negative result narrows the field further, and he explains why he believes the real answer has been hiding in plain sight for over five centuries.
To find all Dr Rosa´s books and follow his studies you can connect through the links below:
A printing error, a noble Portuguese marriage and decades of suppressed evidence: historian Manuel Rosa makes the case that Christopher Columbus was never who we were told he was.
Portuguese-American historian Dr. Manuel Rosa has spent thirty-five years challenging the accepted story of Christopher Columbus, and in this episode of Podcast Portugal he explains why the man history remembers as an Italian weaver was, in his view, never Italian at all. Rosa traces the confusion to a fifteenth-century printing error in Rome that sent non-Spanish historians searching for a “Colombo” in Italy, while Spain had always known the navigator by a different name entirely: Colón.
Central to Rosa’s research is the marriage of Colón to Filipa Moniz, a high-ranking Portuguese noblewoman and Commendadora of the Order of Santiago, whose family sat at the heart of the royal court. Rosa argues that such a union would have been unthinkable for a peasant or a foreign weaver, and that the marriage alone points to a man of noble standing whose true background had to be concealed rather than celebrated.
That concealment, Rosa contends, was deliberate and shared between the Portuguese and Spanish courts. His research points towards Colón being the son of a Polish king who vanished after the Battle of Varna in 1444, his real identity hidden behind a chosen name meaning “member of Christ.” It is a claim that has drawn fierce resistance from mainstream historians, many of whom, Rosa says, have dismissed his work without engaging with the documentary evidence behind it.
The conversation also explores the role of DNA testing in the search for the truth, from the 2003 tests on remains in Seville to a fresh round of studies in 2024 that ruled out the Italian, Portuguese royal and Jewish Catalan theories alike — without yet confirming any alternative. For Rosa, each negative result narrows the field further, and he explains why he believes the real answer has been hiding in plain sight for over five centuries.
To find all Dr Rosa´s books and follow his studies you can connect through the links below: