Lc23 Reyes Católicos

REYES CATÓLICOS

A clandestine wedding in the XV century

On October 19 1469, the clandestine wedding that was to change the destiny of Spain and the world took place. Isabel de Castilla, aged 18, and Fernando de Aragón, aged 17, were betrothed in the Palacio de los Vivero in the castilian city of Valladolid. The city of Valladolid witnessed the wedding that laid the first stone in the construction of Spain as a nation. However, this wedding was opposed by the Pope, as they were cousins, and by Isabel's brother, the castilian King Enrique IV, with whom Isabel had signed a treaty in which she undertook to marry only with the king's authorization, in exchange for return she would be his successor.

The clandestine wedding could only take place thanks to Isabel's forgery of ecclesiastical documents and her failure to respect the treaty signed with her brother, and for two years its validity was hotly disputed.

As Fernando and Isabel did not have the Pope's blessing during their lifetime, they chose to attribute it to one who was already dead. This was the first of many reasons why the princess got married in secret. Fernando disguised as a mule boy for some merchants and Isabel with a cheap excuse to get away, and they spent their honeymoon in the castle of Fuensaldaña, a few kilometers from Valladolid.  But the deception could not be maintained for long and both newly married were excommunicated for two years.

Isabel was a very cunning and intelligent woman at her young age, witty and firm in her decisions. Her character and determination would lead her to unify the two crowns. In fact, the marriage was only for political interests since it was beneficial to both of them, whether there was love afterwards, we do not know. Fernando was the heir to the Crown of Aragón and King of Sicily, and with him at her side, Isabel would unify Spain.

The treaty of Tordesillas: the partition of a New World

By the time Christopher Columbus had returned from his first dramatic - but incredibly transcendent- voyage to the West Indies (reached, as everybody knows, on the 12th of October 1492), the tension between the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal would rocket to a worrying level.

To understand this we have to go back in time a little. Spain and Portugal had been at war for some time regarding the right to the Castilian crown when Isabel of Castile became queen. This conflict had been dealt with when the Treaty of Alcasovas was signed, in 1479. Apart from recognizing the rights of Isabel to be the Queen of Castile, the treaty established some agreements about some islands in the Atlantic (the Canary Islands, the Azores, and some others) as well as about the rights concerning the future discoveries of territories, both in Africa and to the west of the islands mentioned above.

Before arriving at Badalona, where he would be welcomed by the Spanish monarchs, Fernando and Isabel, Columbus spend a few days in Lisbon, where he was questioned by Juan II, king of Portugal. The information that the king of Portugal received about the location of the new territories (the islands that are now part of the American continent) encouraged him to demand the property of those new lands.

It is obvious that Spain considered that pretension absolutely unacceptable. A new conflict seemed to be under way. However, the balance of powers had changed from 1479 and Fernando and Isabel felt that they were strong enough to challenge Juan. And Juan was also aware of the situation, too. In addition, the Pope of Rome took the Spanish side.

Diplomats from both countries started the negotiations, which were complicated, logically. Everybody thought that Columbus had managed to reach the East Indies, so proving without any shadow of a doubt that the Earth was round, not flat. And this would mean huge consequences for international commerce. As things turned out, the discovery of a whole, amazingly rich continent - America- would be of paramount importance. But they didn’t know that … yet.

After several months, diplomats agreed on a document known as the “Treaty of Tordesillas”, signed in the town of Tordesillas on the 7th of June, 1494. To put it in a nutshell, that treaty established a division of the lands that were being explored in the “Western” Indies as well as a definition of the limits of the Atlantic ocean that each monarchy would have the right to use preferentially, though not exclusively. The consequence would be that Portugal would keep the right to go on with his expeditions in and around the African continent in addition to the future colonization of territories in the east of South America (Brazil, as we know it today). On the other hand, Spain would have the right to explore and claim the territories located around the islands discovered by Christopher Columbus (the centre of the American continent) and the west of South America.

This treaty would be abolished in the XVIII century, but it remains as one of the first examples of an agreement between different states in the modern history of Europe; an agreement about which diplomats had to negotiate for months until both parts were satisfied.

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