Controversies about the European discovery of Brazil

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The claim that the Portuguese explorer and navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral was the first European to discover Brazil, in April 22, 1500, is contested.

One theory is an English navigator know by the Portuguese name of Sancho Brandão discovered Brazil around 1341 and that this was described in a secret letter sent to King Afonso IV of Portugal.

Recent research gives some evidence to the claim that an expedition ordered by King Manuel I of Portugal and led by Duarte Pacheco Pereira arrived in Maranhão, on the northeastern coast of Brazil, in 1498. However, this expedition would have been intentionally kept secret by the Portuguese Crown. Before the Tordesilles Treaty, the Pope had signed a Bull treaty that would have given the rights of the newly found Brazil to Castille and not to Portugal. Sancho Brandão did discover Brazil in 1341, but since Portugal could not claim Brazil as theirs, they requested an extension of the imaginary line which separated the world in two halves. The Pope did extend the line towards the west, and they called it the Tordesilles Treaty. With this treaty, the imaginary would leave part of the land in Brazil to Portugal. Then in 1500, Portugal sent Pedro Álvares Cabral Cabral (at the time known as Pedro Alvares Gouvêia), on an expedition to the land discovered by Sancho Brandão in 1341. Portugal already knew that the land was there, but this time, because of the Tordesilles Treaty, the rights to the land belonged to Portugal, and not to Spain.

It is uncertain if Pedro Álvares Cabral was blown westwards to the Brazilian coast while navigating the Cape of Good Hope, or the whole expedition was a secret mission to find new lands in the Atlantic as a response to the Spanish claims that Amerigo Vespucci had visited the Brazilian north coast in July 1499 and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón in November 1499. According to the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Spain could not claim the lands.