Austrialia (Austria & Spain)
"Hello, Tonio. It's me, Roderich."
"¡Hola, Rodrigo! It's always good to hear your voice. Are you going to prank-call me on April Fool's Day?"
"No, but you know what? England just prank-called me and invited me to the next meeting of the Commonwealth member states!"
"Haha! Hello, Australia!"
"Precisely. I'm seriously thinking about showing up, just to see his face. Do you think Vanuatu would care to part with Espíritu Santo just for one day?"
"¡Pues claro! This is brilliant! Ask them if they could set up a sign for you saying 'Austrialia', will you?"
"I will", Austria said, grinning.
—
Notes
Ha! A "real" drabble (100 words), this time!
Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Ptolemy (AD 90-c. 168) both assumed there had to be a landmass in the Southern Hemisphere of Earth, balancing the lands on the Northern Hemisphere. Various naval expeditions searched for this hypothetical terra australis incognita (Latin for "the unknown land of the South") in the early modern period, and only James Cook's (1728-1779) second voyage around the world (1772-1775) disproved its existence. One of those navigators, who went in search for "Terra Australis" for King Philip III of Spain (1578-1621, King 1598-1621) and Pope Clement VIII (1536-1605, Pope 1592-1605), was Portuguese-born Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (1565-1614, Spanish Pedro Fernández de Quirós). Quirós discovered a large island he assumed to be this legendary "southern continent" in May 1606. He called it "Austrialia del Espíritu Santo" (Spanish for "The Austrialian Land of the Holy Spirit"), inserting the "i" as a pun on the Casa de Austria (House of Habsburg) in honour of Philip III from the Spanish branch of the Habsburg family. The island Espíritu Santo is a part of today's Republic of Vanuatu, which is in fact a member state of the Commonwealth of Nations, formerly known as the British Commonwealth, since 1980.