Crown of Castile

Crown of Castile
Corona Castellae (Latin)
Corona de Castilla (Spanish)
1230–1716
Evolution of the Crown of Castile
Capital
Official languagesSpanish
Minority languages[1][2][failed verification]
Religion
Demonym(s)Castilian
GovernmentMonarchy subject to fueros
Monarch 
• 1230–1252
Ferdinand III (first)
• 1474–1504
Isabella I and Ferdinand V
LegislatureCortes of Castile
Historical eraMiddle Ages and early modern period
• Permanent union of Castile & León
23 September 1230
19 October 1469
2 January 1492
1512 (annexed 7 July 1515)
• Ascension of Charles I
23 January 1516
1716
Area
1300[3]335,000 km2 (129,000 sq mi)
Population
• 1300[3]
3,000,000
Currency
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Kingdom of Castile
Kingdom of León
Emirate of Granada
Habsburg Spain
Bourbon Spain
British Gibraltar
a. ^ Itinerant court until Philip II fixed it to Madrid.

The Crown of Castile[nb 1] was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then Castilian king, Ferdinand III, to the vacant Leonese throne. It continued to exist as a separate entity after the personal union in 1469 of the crowns of Castile and Aragon with the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs up to the promulgation of the Nueva Planta decrees by Philip V in 1716.

In 1492, the voyage of Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the Americas were major events in the history of Castile. The West Indies, Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea were also a part of the Crown of Castile when transformed from lordships to kingdoms of the heirs of Castile in 1506, with the Treaty of Villafáfila, and upon the death of Ferdinand the Catholic. The discovery of the Pacific Ocean, the conquest of the Aztec Empire, the conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish conquest of New Granada as well as the conquest of the Philippines all helped shape the Crown of Castile into a global empire in the 16th Century.

The title of "King of Castile" remained in use by the Habsburg rulers during the 16th and 17th centuries. Charles I was King of Aragon, Majorca, Valencia, and Sicily, and Count of Barcelona, Roussillon and Cerdagne, as well as King of Castile and León, 1516–1556.

In the early 18th century, Philip of Bourbon won the War of the Spanish Succession and imposed unification policies over the Crown of Aragon, supporters of their enemies. This unified the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile into the kingdom of Spain. Even though the Nueva Planta decrees did not formally abolish the Crown of Castile, the country (of Castile and Aragon) was called "Spain" by both contemporaries and historians.

  1. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1906). El dialecto leonés (in Spanish). Curpo facultativo de archiveros, bibliotecarios y arqueologos.
  2. ^ Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1904). Manual elemental de gramática histórica española (in Spanish). Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Suárez.
  3. ^ a b Reilly, Bernard F. (1993). The Medieval Spains. Cambridge University Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0521397414. Archived from the original on 4 August 2020. Retrieved 11 October 2019. The new kingdom of Castile had roughly tripled in size to some 335,000 square kilometers by 1300 but, at the same time, its population had increased by the same factor, from one to three millions, so that the average density remained steady at about 8.5 persons per square kilometer.


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