THE DUKES OF ALBA AND THEIR COURT
The making of a lineage
The history of Alba de Tormes changed forever on the day Juan II of Castile gave the village to Gutierre Álvarez de Toledo Ayala, as a reward for the services rendered to the Crown. Álvarez de Toledo, at the time Bishop of Palencia, was a highly intelligent man with a great capacity for political manoeuvre. It was 1429 and the Álvarez de Toledo family had been meddling with royal affairs for three hundred years, making favours and winning battles for different parties. But in any case, that day the fate of Alba and the Álvarez de Toledo family became so firmly tied together that it became the most important noble lineage in the history of Spain: the House of Alba.
Gutierre came to Alba with the purpose of turning the village into the strongest possible centre of power, to counteract that of the kings. And so it was that Alba began a period of deep renovation, whose most visible result was the transformation of its castle into an imposing fortress, set at its highest point.
The enormous influence that the House of Alba achieved was to grow even larger with the appointment of his nephew, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, as first Count of Alba, in 1439 and as compensation for his services to the Crown. But it would be another Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, known as the Great Duke of Alba for the profound impact of his warlike feats and of his actions in favour of the arts, who in the 16th century transformed Alba into a key centre for cultural life, which at the time attracted the most relevant thinkers, poets and writers in search of his patronage and protection.