Historical context
On this day as today in the year 1506, 518 years ago, in Villafáfila (Castilian Crown), King Ferran II of Catalonia-Aragon, regent of the Castilian Crown since the death of Queen Isabel I – called the Catholic – ( 1504), renounced his project of becoming titular king on the throne of Toledo and reuniting the two crowns, a fact that was reserved for his descendants. Ferdinand the Catholic agreed to renounce his personal project for the benefit of his daughter Joana – wrongly called “la Boja” – (who was the beneficiary of Isabel the Catholic’s will) and his son-in-law Philip d’Habsburg – called ” the Beautiful”—, who would act as iuore uxuris (on behalf of his wife) for the alleged mental illness of the new queen.
The context of Cervera’s marriage contracts
It must be remembered that, by virtue of the marriage pacts of Cervera (1468) that had drawn the political architecture of the peninsular dynastic union, neither Ferdinand was king in Toledo nor Isabel was queen in Barcelona, but, simply, they were kings-consorts abroad of their respective domains. But upon the death of Isabella the Catholic (November 26, 1504), the widower Ferdinand tried to pass from the category of king-consort to that of king-titular. This maneuver was common among the members of the Trastàmara house. For example, Joan, the father of Ferran, had been widowed in the first marriage of Queen Blanca of Navarre and had tried to occupy the throne as a holder to the detriment of Carles de Viana, his own son and the beneficiary of the deceased’s will.
The tension between Ferdinand and the Castilian-Andalusian aristocracy
But the relationship between Ferran and his immediate circle (characters from the Barcelona chancellery and the Catalan-Valencian mercantile estate) with the Castilian-Andalusian military aristocracy and landowners (the most powerful social body of the Castilian-Ollean crown), she had always been very tense. The Castilian oligarchies feared Ferran and his circle, because they saw them capable of anything to obtain political and economic power. After Isabel’s death, all of Ferdinand’s maneuvers were aborted by the Castilian Courts. It would be precisely in Villafáfila where the representatives of the Castilian-Olleone estates would say to him the phrase that would go down in history: “Viejo catalanote, go back to your nation”.
