Javier Alonso Luis Fernández de Lugo (?-1525) was a Spanish military man, conquistador, city founder, and administrator. He conquered the islands of La Palma (1492-1493) and Tenerife (1494-1496) for the Castilian Crown; they were the last of the Canary Islands to be conquered by Europeans. He was also the founder of the towns of San Cristóbal de La Laguna and Santa Cruz de La Palma. One biographer has written that his personality was a “terrible ...
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Javier Alonso Luis Fernández de Lugo (?-1525) was a Spanish military man, conquistador, city founder, and administrator. He conquered the islands of La Palma (1492-1493) and Tenerife (1494-1496) for the Castilian Crown; they were the last of the Canary Islands to be conquered by Europeans. He was also the founder of the towns of San Cristóbal de La Laguna and Santa Cruz de La Palma. One biographer has written that his personality was a “terrible mixture of cruelty and ambition or greed, on one part, and on the other a great capacity and sense for imposing order and government on conquered lands,” a trait found in the conquistadors of the New World.
Fernández de Lugo was born in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in Spain, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, though his family was of Galician origin; his relatives, as his surname indicates, originated in the city of Lugo and other Galician locales.
Nothing much is known of his youth. He enlisted in the navy and ended up achieving the rank...
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