Isabel la Católica
"(Also called Isabel I of Castile; Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Spain, 1451 - Medina del Campo, id., 1504) Queen of Castile and León (1474-1504) and of the Crown of Aragon (1479-1504). Daughter of Juan II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal, Isabella the Catholic was only three years old when her brother Enrique IV took the Castilian crown (1454).
In 1468 Enrique IV, a man of weak and indecisive character, recognized Princess Isabel as heir to the throne in the Pact of the Toros de Guisando, thereby depriving his own daughter, Princess Juana, of her succession rights. The maledicence assumed that Princess Juana was actually the daughter of Beltrán de la Cueva , Duke of Alburquerque; hence her nickname of Juana la Beltraneja.
With the aim of consolidating her political position, Isabella the Catholic's advisers agreed to her wedding with Prince Ferdinand of Aragon, eldest son of Juan II of Aragon , a link that was held in secret, in Valladolid, on October 19, 1469. The following year, upset by this marriage, Henry IV of Castile decided to disinherit Isabella and rehabilitate Juana la Beltraneja , who was married to Alfonso V of Portugal , as heiress .
The consequence was that, on the death of King Enrique IV (1474), a sector of the nobility proclaimed Isabel sovereign of Castile, while another noble faction recognized Juana la Beltraneja (1475), which meant the beginning of a bloody civil war. Despite the support of the Portuguese monarch to Beltraneja, the succession conflict was decided in favor of Isabel in 1476, as a result of the serious defeat inflicted on Juana's supporters by Prince Fernando de Aragón in the battle of Toro.
The fighting, however, took place on the Castilian-Portuguese border until 1479, when the Treaty of Alcaçobas meant the definitive recognition of Isabella as queen of Castile by Portugal, in addition to delimiting the area of ??Castilian expansion on the Atlantic coast of Africa. . That same year, on the other hand, the death of Juan II made possible the accession of Fernando II of Aragon to the throne of the Catalan-Aragonese Confederation, and the consequent dynastic union of Castile and the Crown of Aragon.
The testament of Isabel la Católica (detail of an oil painting by Eduardo Rosales)
The main lines of the joint policy developed by Isabel I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon (who would go down in history as the Catholic Monarchs , a title granted in 1494 by Pope Alexander VI ) were the consolidation and expansion of royal power, the stimulation of the economy, the conclusion of the reconquest from the Muslims of the entire peninsular territory and the strengthening of the Catholic faith.
To consolidate and give prestige to the monarchy, the queen established the Holy Brotherhood, an institution in charge of guaranteeing the stability of public order and the administration of justice (1476), abolished the prerogatives granted to the nobility by Enrique IV (1480) and converted the Royal Council in the main governing body of the kingdom, to the detriment of the Cortes.
In the economic aspect, Isabel la Católica cleaned up public finances thanks to a strict tax system and encouraged the development of sheep farming and wool trade. In addition, she knew how to channel the military and expansive tradition of Castile towards the conquest of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, the last Islamic stronghold on the Peninsula (1492), and the war against the North African Muslims, from whom she snatched Melilla (1497). However, the greatest achievement of Elizabethan foreign policy was, without a doubt, the support for the expedition that would culminate in the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1492).
In religious matters, finally, Isabel la Católica carried out a profound ecclesiastical reform with the help of Cardinal Cisneros , created the court of the Inquisition to watch over Catholic orthodoxy (1478) and culminated the process of religious unification with the expulsion of the Jews (1492) and the Mudejars (1502). Upon her death, which occurred on November 26, 1504, the Castilian throne passed to her daughter De Ella Juana la Loca (Juana I of Castile), mother of the future king and emperor Charles ."
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Cristóbal Colón
"(Cristoforo Colombo; Genoa?, 1451 - Valladolid, 1506) Discoverer of America. The origin of this navigator, probably Italian, is shrouded in mystery due to his work and that of his first biographer, his son Hernando Colón . It seems that Christopher Columbus began as a modest craftsman and trader and that he came into contact with the sea through coastal shipping for commercial purposes.
In 1476 the Genoese fleet in which he was traveling was shipwrecked when attacked by French corsairs near Cape Saint Vincent (Portugal); Since then Columbus settled in Lisbon as a commercial agent for the Centurione house, for which he made trips to Madeira, Guinea, England and even Iceland (1477).
Then he dedicated himself to making maps and acquiring self-taught training: he learned classical languages, which allowed him to read ancient geographical treatises (thus having knowledge of the sphericity of the Earth, defended by Aristotle or Ptolemy and commonly accepted among scholars of the fifteenth century ), and began to make contact with the great geographers of the time (such as the Florentine Toscanelli ).
From both, Christopher Columbus came up with the idea that, since the Earth was spherical, the eastern coast of Asia could be easily reached by sailing west. A series of erroneous calculations had made him underestimate the terrestrial perimeter and led him to assume, consequently, that Japan was 2,400 nautical miles from the Canary Islands, a distance that, in reality, is the distance that separates the Antilles from the Canary archipelago.
On the other hand, some Portuguese sailors versed in Atlantic navigation surely informed him of the existence of islands that would allow a stopover in transoceanic navigation; and it is even possible that, as less contrasted theories assure, he had news of the existence of lands to explore on the other side of the Ocean, coming from Portuguese or Nordic sailors (or from the papers of his own father-in-law, colonizer of Madeira). In any case, around 1480 Columbus was determined to undertake the task of opening a naval route to Asia from the west, based on the correct hypothesis that the Earth was round, and on the double error of supposing it to be smaller than it is and of ignoring the existence of the American continent, which stood in the way of the projected route.
Columbus' voyages
The economic interest of the project was unquestionable at that time, since European trade with the Far East, based on the importation of spices and luxury products, was extremely lucrative; such trade was conducted overland through the Arab-controlled Middle East. The Portuguese had been trying for years to open a maritime route to India along the African coast, an undertaking that Vasco Da Gama would culminate in 1498.
The discovery of America
Columbus offered his project to King John II of Portugal , who submitted it for examination by a committee of experts. Although he ended up rejecting the proposal, the Portuguese monarch previously made it a condition that he not set sail from the Canary Islands, since, if the trip were successful, the Crown of Castile could claim the conquered lands by virtue of the Treaty of Alcaçobas. Columbus found it too risky to leave Madeira (he only trusted the calculations he had made from the Canary Islands) and tried his luck in Spain with the Duke of Medina Sidonia and the Catholic Monarchs , who rejected his proposal as unfeasible and because of the excessive pretensions of Colon.
Finally, Queen Isabella the Catholic approved Columbus' project through the mediation of the king's treasurer, Luis de Santángel, as a result of the capture of Granada, which put an end to the Christian reconquest of the Peninsula from Islam (1492). The queen herself signed the so-called Capitulations of Santa Fe, by which she granted Columbus a series of privileges in return for his risky undertaking. Obtained the necessary financing, and with the invaluable help of Martín Alonso Pinzón , Columbus assembled a flotilla of three caravels (the Pinta, the Niña and the Santa María ) with which he left the port of Palos (Huelva) on August 3, 1492.
Columbus sailed to the Canary Islands and then west, reaching the island of Guanahaní (San Salvador, in the Bahamas) on October 12, 1492. For the first time (if the inconsequential feat of the Vikings is left out) a group of Europeans he stepped on American soil, although neither Columbus nor his crew were aware of it. On that trip he also discovered Cuba and Hispaniola (Santo Domingo), and even built a first Spanish settlement there with the wreck of the Santa Maria (fort La Navidad). Persuaded that he had reached the Asian shores, he returned to Spain with the two remaining ships in 1493.
Columbus made three more trips to continue the exploration of those lands. In the second (1493-1496) he touched Cuba, Jamaica and Puerto Rico and founded the city of La Isabela; but he had to return to Spain to face the accusations arising from discontent with his way of governing Hispaniola. On the third voyage (1498-1500) he discovered Trinidad and made landfall at the mouth of the Orinoco; but the revolt of the settlers of Hispaniola forced the removal of him as governor and sent him as a prisoner to Spain.
After being tried and rehabilitated, his privileges were reviewed (the viceregal power being excluded) and he undertook a fourth trip (1502) with a ban on approaching Hispaniola; he toured the Central American coast of Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. He returned to Spain in 1504 and spent the rest of his life trying to obtain royal grants for himself and his descendants, as King Ferdinand the Catholic tried to cut back on the privileges granted given the proportions that the discovery was taking and the inconvenience of leaving a upstart as sole lord of the Indies.
Columbus had discovered America by chance as a result of his intuition and willpower. Although he failed in his original idea of ??opening a new trade route between Europe and Asia, he opened something more important: a "New World" that, in the following years, would be explored by navigators, missionaries and soldiers from Spain and Portugal, incorporating a vast territory to Western civilization and profoundly modifying the political and economic conditions of the Old Continent."
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