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his connections among the elite was
appointed governor of Seigliano in the
Kingdom of Naples in 1607. Also active in
intellectual circles from an early age, he
became a close friend of L
OPE
DE
V
EGA
and
a member of several literary groups in
V
ALENCIA
, a city second only to M
ADRID
in
its cultural activities.
Castro was the author of a wide variety
of plays in such categories as mythological,
autobiographical, and “cape and sword.”
His most notable work was drawn directly
from the popular tradition of the
romancero,
a collection of ballads growing out of the
medieval epics of warriors and heroes. His
Las mocedades del Cid
(
The Youthful Deeds of
the Cid,
c. 1599) presents the Spanish
national hero at the commencement of his
career as he is forced to choose between
his love for Jimena and the demands of
family honor, which eventually force him
to confront and kill her father. This epi-
sode served as inspiration for
Le Cid
(1637)
by Pierre Corneille and has been retold in
opera and motion pictures. The dramatist
also drew upon the
romancero
for
El conde
Irlos
(Count Irlos) and
El conde Alarcos
(Count Alarcos), both striking depictions
of the chivalric codes and published
between 1614 and 1625.
Castro drew his dramatic inspiration not
only from medieval themes but from the
creative writings of his contemporaries.
Three of his plays were inspired by the
recent (1605) novel by M
IGUEL
DE
C
ER
-
VANTES
; the most notable of these is
Don
Quijote de la Mancha.
As in later adaptations
for the stage from this work,
El curioso imper-
tinente
(The impertinent curious one) and
La fuerza de la sangre
(The force of blood), he
chooses particular incidents and characters
from Cervantes's sprawling panorama of
Don Quixote's pursuit of a noble vision
among the realities of 17th-century life.
Catalina of Aragon
Catalonia (Cataluña, Catalunya)
Catalonia is a region in northeastern Spain
comprising the provinces of B
ARCELONA
,
Gerona, Lleida, and Tarragona, each based
on the city of the same name. Catalan, still
widely spoken there, is a romance language
more closely allied to the Provençal of
southern France that to the Castilian that is
the official language of modern Spain. Dur-
ing the Middle Ages Catalan literature and
art flourished as did a Mediterranean trade
that reached out to Italy and the Middle
East. Through a dynastic union with A
RA
-
GON
in 1137 Catalonia was joined to the
Aragonese crown, while retaining a con-
siderable degree of autonomy. Its political
and cultural traditions were undercut by
the merger of Aragon with C
ASTILE
during
the early Renaissance, and Catalonia's
commercial outreach was likewise sub-
merged into the general policies of the
Spanish state.
Catalan nationalism was never far below
the surface, despite the diminution of spe-
cial privileges and the constant insistence
upon the unity of “imperial Spain.” During
the 1640s, with the support of France, Louis
XIV was proclaimed prince of Catalonia,
and the authority of King P
HILIP
IV was
restored only with difficulty. This “revolt of
the Catalans” was echoed some 60 years
later during the W
AR
OF
THE
S
PANISH
S
UC
-
CESSION
, when the new B
OURBON
dynasty
of Spain was rejected in favor of the rival
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