Joaquín Loriga

Joaquín Loriga Taboada, Lalín, 23 September 1895 – Cuatro Vientos Airport 18 July 1927, was a Galician aviation pioneer. As Captain promoted in 1926, together with two pilots and three mechanical engineers, the first long-distance flight from Madrid to Manila of over eleven thousand miles.

The trip, which took 128 flight hours, hopped thought North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Macao, Aparri in northern Luzon and then finally on to Manila. Only Loriga's plane completed the flight.

Raised in a stately house known by the parish as Pazo de Liñares in Lalín, he joined the army and the pilots division in the Spanish Military Aviation Service in 1920.

Two years later, Loriga was stationed to the conflict in the Rif War where he was responsible to supply military bases surrounded by the local rebels, in May 1924, his squad shot down the only rifian plane. Loriga was cited for bravery with the Militar Medal for his services during the war and promoted to work in the Cuatro Vientos Airport in the Spanish capital.

In 1924, Loriga, as leader squad, proposed the idea of an raid between Spain and Philippines. In that time no other direct air connection existed between Europe and the Far East, even when France and UK were studying that possibility considering their conquests in the area.

The motivation to sponsor the trip was the connection between the old colony and Spain, with current commercial links and a considerable Spanish population in the capital, together with a memory of the old colonial times as more beneficial than the contemporary American occupation.

Three Breget XIX left Madrid on 5 April 1926, but only one plane made it to Manila. The other two planes were forced to land and be abandoned in the North African desert and on the coast of China.

After each stopover the pilots rest meanwhile the engineers check the airplanes. Then at the beginning of the next flight the engineers try to sleep on the rear wing. During the flight between Tripoli and Cairo, one of the biplanes flown by Rafael Martínez Estévez had to return to Tunisia, due to an engine failure. Loriga, after the stages through Iran, Pakistan, India and Vietnam, was forced to execute an emergency landing for a leakage of water in the biplane. He landed in Tien-Pack, close to Guangzhou, in China, the crew were missing for several days before their reecounter.

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