After the first transatlantic voyage, maize was among the American food plants carried back to Spain, initiating its Old World circulation through Iberian ports and courts.
Research syntheses of Portuguese agrarian history commonly place early adoption of maize in the Coimbra area in the 1515–1525 window, marking an early, well-documented foothold in mainland Portugal.
Within a few decades of the first voyages, maize began to be cultivated in Spain, laying the groundwork for its later role in peasant diets, especially in wetter northern regions.
Maize spread from Iberian and Mediterranean exchange networks into northern Italy; the Veneto is frequently identified as an early center of cultivation, later becoming strongly associated with maize-based polenta traditions.
By 1533, maize was sufficiently integrated into local markets around Coimbra for prices to be quoted, indicating routine production and commercialization rather than experimental planting.
In his mid-16th-century observations, physician-botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli described rural communities making polenta from maize flour, an early textual witness to culinary adoption in northern Italian borderlands.
Naturalist Costanzo Felici wrote that the "Indian" cereal (often labeled granoturco) was valued locally and used to make a relatively white, sweet bread—evidence of broader culinary experimentation beyond porridge.
Gaspar Frutuoso wrote Saudades da Terra (1586–1590), a key late-16th-century compilation on Atlantic islands (Azores, Madeira, Canaries) that historians use as contextual evidence for early modern crops and lifeways in Iberian-linked Atlantic spaces.
Early modern documentary evidence summarized in recent scholarship notes maize established in the Canary Islands by 1609, supporting the islands’ role as an Atlantic “stepping-stone” in Iberian crop exchange and adoption.
By the mid-17th century, maize had become a common food in Portugal’s Minho and Beira provinces, signaling a shift from novelty crop to staple in the humid north where yields were advantageous.
By the 18th century, maize was a leading staple crop in Galicia, integrated into subsistence farming and household economies in northern Spain’s humid Atlantic zone.
Physician Gaspar Casal described pellagra in Spain in the early 18th century, a pivotal medical marker later linked to maize-heavy diets in Europe where nixtamalization was not adopted.
In 1771, Milanese physician Francesco Frapolli coined the term pellagra in print, reflecting how maize-based staples (notably polenta in northern Italy) intersected with public-health crises in parts of Italy.
Late-18th-century figures summarized in recent research report substantial maize production in Gran Canaria in 1789, underscoring how thoroughly maize had become embedded in Atlantic-Iberian agrarian systems.
European adoption of maize in Iberia and Italy (c. 1500–1800)
