Published as part of a worldwide celebration of the quincentenary of Columbus's voyage to the New World, this book brings together some of the nation's leading journalists and scholars to survey five centuries of Hispanic life in Florida—the state where the heritage of the epic Spanish transoceanic voyage is most visible. The peninsula of Florida was discovered in 1513 by Juan Ponce de Leon, who had sailed with Columbus on his second voyage in 1493. Juan Ponce de Leon named the realm he discovered la Florida, the Flowery land, and from then on it became a place crisscrossed with the pathways of the Spanish bringing their culture to this new world.