By Rogelio Rafael Gómez Medrano

Some people forget, intentionally or through ignorance, that historical memory goes beyond the civil war of 1936 and that it is also historical memory to remember the historical figures and events that occurred at any time in our past, recent or distant, because they made us a great nation and gave us identity markers that distinguish us from other nations.

What do I mean by this? Well, I mean that there are other historical events worthy of consideration, such as the one that concerns me at this moment.

In 2016, we should be remembering and commemorating, with public events such as talks, conferences, tributes, and even films—of which there are many—the 500th anniversary of the death of a great figure in our history: Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Aragon, Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and Navarre, King Consort of Castile, unifier of Spain, and promoter of the discovery of America alongside his wife, Queen Isabella of Castile. He was King of Sicily from 1468 to 1516 and King of Naples from 1504 to 1516. Through the Treaty of Barcelona in 1493, he recovered Roussillon and Cerdanya, which had been occupied by France since 1463. However, despite all this, he has been forgotten, at least as far as I know.

Ferdinand the Catholic was born in the Aragonese town of Sos, near Navarre, shortly after 2:00 PM on March 10, 1452, and died on January 23, 1516, in Madrigalejo, a hamlet near the city of Trujillo, in the province of Cáceres. In this small town in Cáceres, above the door of the house he occupied, there is a plaque that reads: » The most high and powerful King Ferdinand V of Glorious Memory died here in this chamber of Madrigalejo, in the house of Our Lady Saint Mary of Guadalupe, on Wednesday, the day of Saint Ildefonso, between three and four in the morning, the 23rd day of January, 1516. » I request that this date be commemorated, just as the 400th anniversary of Cervantes’ death is being deservedly commemorated this same year. They ennoble us.

Peter Martyr d’Anghiera wrote in a letter dated the same day as the death of Ferdinand the Catholic: «The lord of so many kingdoms, adorned with so many palms, the propagator of the Catholic religion and the vanquisher of so many enemies, died in a miserable rustic house and, contrary to popular opinion, poor. He was not born in a hut, although he considered himself to have been conceived in one, and he was king, perhaps at that moment the most powerful of all…»

This piece praising such an important figure deserves consideration, but as I said, we haven’t heard or read anything that brings Ferdinand the Catholic to mind with any acts in his honor. This neglect is perhaps due to the fact that Ferdinand of Aragon was the architect of the unification of the Spanish nation, and the pressure of nationalism has inhibited Spanish politicians with a stronger sense of national identity, thus preventing them from extolling the figure and work of such an illustrious figure. Nationalists don’t hold him in high esteem; they would have preferred a divided and fractured Spain, which is ultimately what they seek to achieve their ends, despite the fact that we are the oldest nation in Europe.

Spain, our nation, was already unified in other periods of our history, such as during the Roman era, when its unity was organized into administrative regions for better governance and control, and later, with the Visigoths, it was also unified, with the city of Toledo as the capital of the Kingdom.

But Ferdinand the Catholic was not the only one who completed the Reconquista and unification of Spain; He also supported and financed Christopher Columbus’s great voyage, which led to the discovery of a New World called America, always with the support of his wife, Queen Isabella I of Castile. The discovery was one of the greatest historical events in human history. Had he and his wife not supported it, others would have, and for others, it would have been a source of recognition, pride, and glory, with all the nuances that can be included, because certainly some abuses were committed by people who got out of control. But that wasn’t the intention of the Spanish monarchs or Christopher Columbus. Their intention was to evangelize and transmit to the new territories the culture that we had received in other times from other peoples who, in turn, had transmitted it to us, such as the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans, among others. However, in receiving that culture, in some cases, we were also subjected to abuses and barbarities.

To prevent these abuses, alongside Columbus were friars like Bartolomé de las Casas, «Procurator or Protector of all the Indians of the Indies,» with the intention of evangelizing the people of the newly discovered lands. This was the true reality. But given our destructive nature, we tend to value what is foreign more than what is our own, downplaying the event and harshly criticizing it, which for other nations would be a source of pride. We cannot offer a critique without placing ourselves in the context of the times in which the events occurred, without considering the ways of life, customs, and cultural levels of the era. The process of acculturation of Spain by the Romans, introducing us to their language, Latin, their culture, their art, their laws, and their customs, was called Romanization, and over time, the Spanish were considered Roman citizens.

That which we all readily accept, when we are the ones transmitting part of that culture and the Christianity that formed part of our religious morality, then we become fierce critics. Our process of transmitting our culture to America is similar to the Roman one and is called Hispanization. This entire immense work of cultural expansion in the New World has as its main protagonist one man, a King whose memory and recognition we uphold: Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Aragon and consort of Queen Isabella the Catholic of Castile.

As the great statesman he was, he wisely used his children’s marriage alliances to expand his international relations and secure commitments to the nation’s security. With this political intention, he married his eldest daughter, Isabella (1470-1498), to Alfonso of Portugal. After becoming a widow, she remarried King Manuel of Portugal, but Isabella died after this marriage, and her father, Ferdinand, arranged a new marriage for King Manuel with Maria (1482-1517), another daughter of King Ferdinand. He married his son John to Margaret of Austria, sister of Philip the Handsome, who was in turn married to Joanna, later known as Joanna the Mad. He married his daughter Catherine (1485-1536) to Arthur, Prince of Wales, and after Arthur’s early death, he married her again to Henry VIII of England. As we can see, he pursued a broad and varied marriage policy befitting a true strategist, to such an extent that he was considered by Machiavelli in his work, *The Prince*. Such an important figure that he does not deserve to be forgotten.

Nobody at that time, after his birth, thought that the little Aragonese prince would become the king of kings of the peninsula.

After the death of his wife Isabella in 1504, also largely forgotten, he remarried the Frenchwoman Germaine de Foix, niece of King Louis XII of France. However, his love for his first wife, Isabella the Catholic, led him to express his wish to be buried next to her in the Royal Chapel of Granada. Concerned for the salvation of his soul, which speaks volumes about his strong Catholic faith, he stipulated that ten thousand masses be said for his soul.

Honor and glory to such an illustrious person.

To supplement your information and study, I recommend reading the following books:
1. Ferdinand the Catholic, by Ernest Belenguer, Peninsula Editions
; 2. Columbus’s Voyages
; 3. History of the Indies, by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Alianza Editorial;
4. Orbe Novo, by Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, Alción Publishing House

Author: Rogelio Rafael Gómez Medrano