Rodrigo de Jerez was one of the Spanish crewmen who sailed to the Americas on the La Santa Maria as part of Christopher Columbu’s firts voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492.
He was born in Ayamonte, a small city in the southwest of Spain. He is credited with being the firts European smoker.
On 12 October 1492, the crew firts encountered tobacco at San Salvador island in the Bahamas, khown to the natives as Guanahani. The navites presented them with appatently valuable “dry leaves that spread a peculiar fragance”. The crew later discarded the leaves.
In November 1492, Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres first observed natives smoking. They were searching for the Emperor of China, Hongzhi Emperor, in Cuba. Apparently, the natives made rolls of palm and mais leaves “in the manner of a musket formed of paper”  with tobacco on the  inside. One would light one side and “drink” the smoke out of the other. Rodrigo de Jerez picked up the tobacco smoking habit.
When he returned to El Viejo Continente in the La Niña, he introduced the habit to his home town, Ayamonte. The smoke surrounding him frightened his neighbours: the Spanish Inquisition imprisoned him  for his “sinful and infernal habits”, because  “only Devil could give a man the power to exhale smoke from his mouth”. When he was released seven years later, smoking tobacco had caught on arround El Viejo Continente.