Plus ultra
Latin motto and the national motto of Spain
Plus ultra (Latin: [pluːs ˈʊltraː], Spanish: [plus ˈultɾa], English: "further beyond") is a Latin phrase and the national motto of Spain. A reversal of the original phrase non plus ultra ("nothing further beyond"), said to have been inscribed as a warning on the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar (which marked the edge of the known world in antiquity), it has metaphorical suggestions of taking risks and striving for excellence. Its original version, the personal motto of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, also Duke of Burgundy and King of Spain, was Plus oultre in French. It appears on the columns of the Spanish coat of arms, in reference to the discovery of the New World.
History
Plus oultre, French for "further beyond", was adopted by the young Duke of Burgundy and new King of Spain Charles of Habsburg as his personal motto, at the suggestion of his adviser Luigi Marliano, an Italian physician, in 1516. It was emblematic of Marliano's vision of a Christian empire spanning beyond the boundaries of the Old World, now that Charles also controlled territories in the New World through the Spanish crown. It was also associated with the desire to bring the Reconquista past Gibraltar into North Africa and revive the crusades of the chivalric tradition. The motto is first recorded on the back of Charles's chair in the church of St Gudule, Brussels. Spaniards translated the original French into Latin due to the hostility they bore for the French-speaking Burgundian advisors and ministers Charles brought with him to Spain from the Low Countries. At Charles's entry into Burgos in 1520, an arch was set up bearing on one side, "Plus ultra", and on the other "All of Africa weeps because it knows that you have the key [Gibraltar and] have to be its master".
“Plus ultra” enters the record as latin motto and the national motto of Spain. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Plus, ultra and Latin can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1045726. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1516 and 1520.
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This entry incorporates text from “Plus ultra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.