The identification of El Piñal (or Pinhal) to a modern location is made difficult by incomplete and contradictory descriptions from surviving sources, as well as the shifting sediment of the Pearl River Delta altering the coastline from what it had been in the 16th century.
Based on these records, scholars have suggested that El Piñal may be located in the mouth of the Xi River west of Macau, or around Qi'ao Island in the Lingdingyang estuary.
[3][4] Scholars who favour El Piñal being in the vicinity of the Xi River include Albert Kammerer, Jin Guoping, and Francisco Roque de Oliveira.
Jesuit accounts tell of a Chinese temple complex in El Piñal, which Jin Guoping infers to be the shrine of the last Song emperor Zhao Bing, who fled the Mongols and perished at the 1279 Battle of Yamen across from Hutiaomen.
[6] Another identification of El Piñal, favoured by Albert Kammerer, is supported by a 1646 memorial by Jorge Pinto de Azevedo, which includes a map showing an island called "Pinhal" at the mouth of Xi River's main branch, near Lampacau.
Boxer identifies the anchorage of Tangjiawan (唐家灣) in Zhongshan Island as Pinhal, noting "this is the only place between the Bocca Tigris and Macao where a grove of pine trees has flourished for centuries".
The San Felipe incident of 1596 and the subsequent execution of Franciscan friars in Nagasaki all but confirmed Japan's hostile intentions in Spanish eyes, and even the death of Hideyoshi in 1598 did not alleviate these fears.
With a gift of 7000 reals to the mandarins there (led by Dai Yao [zh], Viceroy of Liangguang[1]), the Spanish were allowed to establish themselves provisionally in El Piñal on the same terms as Siamese traders, albeit with a 50% higher tax rate than the Portuguese.
The Cantonese superintendent of coastal defense (海道副使; haitao in old European sources) was specifically recorded to have expressed that if they acceded to Portuguese meddling on this matter, the people of Macau "would become more arrogant".
In addition, the enterprising Cantonese officials might have been emboldened by the commercial success of Portuguese Macau to allow Spain, with their easy access to American gold and silver mines, to settle nearby.
[15] On the other hand, the imperial court in Beijing favoured the prohibitionist haijin policies, making it a real possibility that both Portugal and Spain's permission to stay in the Pearl River Delta could be revoked for any perceived misbehaviour.
[7] Around the same time as Juan Zamudio's voyage to China, on 17 September 1598, the former Philippines governor Luis Pérez Dasmariñas left Manila with three ships on an expedition to Cambodia to support its king against Siam.
The effect on commerce became readily apparent: Spanish competition drove up the price of Chinese goods and thus affected Portuguese purchasing power and their resale margins.
There he communicated with Paulo de Portugal that he had no intention to harm Portuguese interests, and as proof of that goodwill, promised that he would seek authorization for Macau to trade with Manila legally, and leave China by February 1600.
[23] In the immediate aftermath of the Pinhal episode, King Philip III made it known to the Real Audiencia of Manila that he did not approve of Juan Zamudio's voyage that resulted in the establishment of El Piñal.