ALENDA, GASPAR. - Franciscan missionary, born in Elche (Spain) around 1580, died on the island of Hermosa on 8 August 1642. He departed together with Fr. Pietro de la Concepción for the missions of the Philippine Islands in 1628 and arrived in Manila the following year. In 1636 he went to China; in Beijing he was imprisoned and sentenced to death, but was released and sent to Macao. In 1638 he arrived on the island of Hermosa, where he was appointed superior of the convent existing there and where he died, wounded by Dutch pirates.
BIBL.: L. Perez, Origen de las Misiones Franciscanas en la provincia de Kwan-Tung (China), in Archivio Ibero-Americano, Madrid 8 (1917); A. van den Wijngaert, Sinica Franciscana, II, Quaracchi 1933.