HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 240

optimist, who shared many attributes of his
fellow conquistadores, he was a typical rep-
resentative of those terrifying agents of
Europe's “civilizing” mission who would
rise up again and again during the great age
of conquest.

guese were ready to throw off the rule of
their larger neighbor. John was proclaimed
king of Portugal by an assembly of both
nobles and commoners and took an oath to
be subject to their will. As the first ruler of
the House of B RAGANÇA , he was a popular
but relatively inactive ruler, leaving the
conduct of the independence war to his
generals. His main concern was to secure
the continuing support of France, whose
ongoing conflict with Spain made her will-
ing to assist Portugal and other rebels
against Spanish imperial dominance. The
struggle for Portuguese freedom was still
being waged at the time of John's death,
and M ADRID would not recognize Portu-
guese sovereignty for another decade.

Joanna (Juana) (1479-1555)
queen of Castile
Second daughter of F ERDINAND V and I SA -
BELLA I, she married Philip of Habsburg,
duke of Burgundy, in 1496. Due to a series
of deaths in her family she became the
inheritor of C ASTILE in 1504. As Joanna had
been subject for some years to bouts of
mental derangements (hence the nickname
Juana la Loca —“Joanna the Mad”), her hus-
band and her father disputed control of her
inheritance. Following the death of Philip
(who had been proclaimed P HILIP I of Cas-
tile in 1506), Joanna nominally ruled as co-
sovereign with her son, C HARLES I. Due to
her incapacity she remained under supervi-
sion at the Castle of Tordesillas for the rest
of her life. During the 1520s rebels against
her son's authority briefly restored her lib-
erty and proclaimed her their rightful ruler,
but after initial signs of normality she
refused to cooperate and was soon returned
to her familiar setting where she remained
until her death.

John V (João V) (1689-1750)
king of Portugal
The adolescent John V inherited from his
father, P ETER II, in 1706 both a lucrative
trade agreement with England and Portu-
gal's damaging participation in the W AR OF
THE S PANISH S UCCESSION . The discovery of
gold and diamonds in the previously unpro-
ductive colony of B RAZIL enabled him to
lead Portugal into a period of prosperity. His
generous expenditure of the colonial reve-
nues on public works and the adornment of
L ISBON led to his being nicknamed “the
Magnanimous.” In time his extravagance
caused lasting damage to the nation's econ-
omy. Preoccupied with his grandiose self-
image, he attempted to create at his palace
at M AFRA a version of Louis XIV's Versailles
that wasted resources and earned him much
criticism. Although designed as a combina-
tion of royal residence, monastery, and
basilica, like that which P HILIP II of Spain
had created at E L E SCORIAL , Mafra, had in

John IV (João IV) (1604-1656)
king of Portugal
John, duke of Bragança from 1630, repre-
sented a line of claimants to the Portuguese
throne that had been excluded in 1580
when the Spanish monarch, P HILIP II, seized
the succession in L ISBON . By 1640, after the
so-called Sixty Years' Tyranny, the Portu-