The Revolt of the Comuneros was an uprising by citizens of Castile against the rule of Charles I and his administration between 1520 and 1521. At its height, the rebels controlled the heart of Castile, ruling the cities of Valladolid, Tordesillas, and Toledo.
Execution of the Comuneros of Castile, by Antonio Gisbert (1860)
San Pablo Church in Valladolid, seat of a Cortes held in 1518. Protests emerged when the Flemish adviser Jean de Sauvage was named its president, presaging later troubles.
A 1516 portrait of King Charles I of Castile and Aragon, later Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, by Bernard van Orley. Charles would rule one of the largest empires in European history—through his father Philip, Burgundy and the Netherlands; through his mother Joanna, Castile, Aragon, and Naples; and through his grandfather Maximilian and his election in 1519 as Holy Roman Emperor, Germany, Austria, and much of Northern Italy.
Toledo, home of the first Comunidad
The Crown of Castile 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 1715.
Equestrian heraldic of King John II of Castile in the Equestrian armorial of the Golden Fleece 1433–1435. Collection Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal.
The Surrender of Granada (Francisco Padilla, oil on canvas, 1882)
Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs (The return of Columbus)
"The Comuneros Padilla, Bravo and Maldonado in the Patíbulo", by Antonio Gisbert, 1860.