Template:On this day - March 16

Francisco Pizarro

• 455 – Death of Valentinian III, Roman emperor of the West (b. 419).
• 1279 – Death of Joan of Dammartin, whose marriage to Ferdinand III of Castile made her queen consort of Castile and of León (b. c. 1220).
• 1478 – Birth of Francisco Pizarro, Spanish explorer, soldier and conquistador (d. 1541).
• 1521 – The fleet of Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Philippine Islands, becoming the first Europeans to reach the archipelago, which they named San Lázaro.
• 1621 – In Cartagena de Indias (New Kingdom of Granada, present-day Colombia), Benkos Biohó, leader of the maroon slaves of San Basilio de Palenque, is executed.
• 1740 – In Benidorm (Spain), the image of its patroness, the Virgen del Sufragio, is found intact; it had reached its beaches in a londro that had sailed there without a crew and that was burned for fear that it was infected with the plague.
• 1781 – In the New Kingdom of Granada (present-day Colombia), Manuela Beltrán and a handful of criollos lead a multi-class demonstration from El Socorro to the capital (Santa Fe de Bogotá), known as the Comuneros Movement.
• 1792 – In Nicaragua, in the town of Nandaime, in the present-day Granada Department, the national hero General José Dolores Estrada Vado is born, victor over the U.S. filibusters at the Battle of San Jacinto on September 14, 1856.
• 1797 – Death of Juan Pablo Forner, Spanish Enlightenment writer (b. 1756).
• 1812 – The Battle of Badajoz is fought at Badajoz, in which British and Portuguese forces besiege and defeat the French, during the Napoleonic Invasion of Spain.
• 1817 – In Chile, Captain general Bernardo O'Higgins founds the Military School.
• 1818 – In Venezuela, the pro-independence army is defeated at the third Battle of La Puerta.
• 1892 – Birth of César Vallejo, Peruvian poet and writer (d. 1938).
• 1907 – Birth of José María Otero de Navascués, Spanish rear admiral, engineer and physicist specializing in the field of optics (d. 1983).
• 1930 – Death of Miguel Primo de Rivera, Spanish soldier who governed Spain between 1923 and 1930 after a coup d'état (b. 1870).
• 1938 – In Barcelona (Spain), the rebels in the Spanish Civil War carry out three days of air raids against the civilian population, causing more than a thousand deaths.
• 1940 – Spain adopts Central European Time for the first time, although geographically the country lies in the zone corresponding to Western European Time.
• 1943 – In Madrid (Spain), the First Legislature of the Cortes begins.
• 1979 – Death of Carmen de Icaza, Spanish journalist and writer, popular for her romance novels (b. 1899).
• 2008 – On the Simón Bolívar International Bridge (between Colombia and Venezuela), the great concert Paz Sin Fronteras ("Peace Without Borders") is held, featuring Juanes, Juan Luis Guerra, Carlos Vives and Juan Fernando Velasco; more than 100,000 people from both countries attend.
• 2009 – The Junta de Andalucía and the Government of Spain agree on the payment of 1,204 million euros to Andalusia as historical debt.