Antedating the Haoqiu zhuan as the first Chinese text to be translated into a European language, the Mingxin baojian, this paper focuses on the latter text translated into Spanish. The author provides a chronological account of its transmission to Spain via a translation by the Dominican priest Juan Cobo and reads the Spanish translation, kept by the Madrid National Library, against the Chinese original. Among the conclusions arrived at by the author are: the Southern Min dialect has left its imprint on the Spanish translation, and by rather different channels the text was transmitted to Spain, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.