I-saw-a-mount theories still argue over Uruguay’s capital
Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, held about 1.287 million people in the 2023 census. A Portuguese garrison planted in November 1723 was expelled by Spain in February 1724. Mercer has ranked it Latin America’s top quality-of-life city since 2005, with art-deco avenues and a university hub.
Two more theories join the debate. Historian Rolando Laguarda Trías proposed that mapmakers labelled the hill Monte VI De Este a Oeste, the sixth peak seen sailing the river westward, later merged into one word, though nobody can identify the other five. A religious reading links it to Santo Ovídio, a bishop of Roman Braga, because an insertion in de Albo's log says the peak was by then corruptly called Santo Vidio. The oldest Spanish mention, from January 1520, describes a hat-shaped hill named Montevidi.
Portugal had founded Colonia do Sacramento across from Buenos Aires in 1680. In late November 1723 the Portuguese commander Freitas da Fonseca raised a fort on the bay, and on 22 January 1724 forces sent by Buenos Aires governor Bruno Mauricio de Zabala made the Portuguese leave. Six families came first from Buenos Aires, then settlers from the Canary Islands. A 1724 census counted over 100 Galician and Canarian families, more than 1,000 Indigenous people, mostly Guaraní, and some enslaved Africans of Bantu origin, and the town was laid out as San Felipe y Santiago de Montevideo.
Zabala's diary gives 24 December 1726 as the founding date, and the town gained full independence from Buenos Aires on 1 January 1730. Britain held it briefly in 1807, and during Portugal's annexation as Cisplatina, lasting until 1831, it was called Montevidéu.
The city proper covers 201 square kilometres on the Río de la Plata and holds about 36.8 percent of Uruguayans, within a metro area of some 2 million. It hosts the headquarters of Mercosur and ALADI, drawing comparisons with Brussels, staged every match of the first World Cup in 1930, and had a projected 2022 GDP of $53.9 billion.
Source: Montevideo
