ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (AP) — Spanish King Juan Carlos on Sunday visited the nation's oldest city and urged residents to remember its history as a former Spanish settlement.
St. Augustine was founded by Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez in 1565, 42 years before the English colony at Jamestown, Va., and 55 years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.
The king, accompanied by Queen Sofia, spoke of Menendez and 800 other Spaniards who landed at Cape Canaveral on their way to St. Augustine.
"Perhaps Pedro Menendez had a premonition when he landed at Cape Canaveral on his way to the bay of St. Augustine that three centuries later the United States would be sending manned spaceships from there to the moon," the king said. "We must remember and preserve the past and prepare for the future."