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Ferdinand on the left with Isabella on the right. The inscription above identifies them as "Lord Ferdinand and Lady Isabella, Kings of Castille and of Aragon".

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The Catholic Monarchs (Spanish: Reyes Católicos)^[1] is the joint title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile^[2] and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; they were given a papal dispensation to deal with consanguinity by Sixtus IV. The title of "Catholic King and Queen" was bestowed on them by the Pope Alexander VI in 1496, for defending Catholic dogmas within their realms. They married on October 19, 1469, in the city of Valladolid; Isabella was eighteen years old and Ferdinand a year younger. Their marriage united both crowns under the same family. John Elliot and many other historians consider that the unification of Spain can essentially be traced back to the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, but newer historical opinions recognize that under their rule Spain was still a composite monarchy. Castile and Aragon remained largely separate entities for decades to come. The court of Ferdinand and Isabella was constantly on the move, in order to bolster local support for the crown from local feudal lords.

"Catholic monarchs" or "kings" can of course be used in a generic sense (e.g., "the Pope had authority over Catholic monarchs..."); the particular or generic use can be distinguished from the context.

Succession[link]

Isabella was named heir to the throne of Castile by her half brother Henry IV of Castile in the Treaty of the Bulls of Guisando. She became Queen of Castile in 1474. Her niece, Joanna of Castile, attempted to gain the throne by bringing in the foreign help of Afonso V of Portugal, leading to the War of Castilian Succession. More recently, some speculate that Joanna was the legitimate successor, though Isabella was able to portray herself as such.^[3] Isabella's supporters came out ahead in good part due to Aragon's support through Ferdinand, and she officially won in 1479 via the Treaty of Alcacovas. Ferdinand became the King of Aragon in 1479. Though their marriage united the two kingdoms, leading to the beginnings of modern Spain, they ruled independently and their kingdoms retained their own regional laws and governments for the next few centuries.

Domestic policy[link]

Ferdinand and Isabella with their subjects

The Catholic Monarchs set out to restore royal authority in Spain. To accomplish their goal, they first created a group named the Holy Brotherhood. These men were used as a judicial police force for Castile, as well as to attempt to keep Castilian nobles in check. To establish a more uniform judicial system, the Catholic Monarchs created the Royal Council, and appointed magistrates (judges) to run the towns and cities. This establishment of royal authority is known as the Pacification of Castile, and can be seen as one of the crucial steps toward the creation of one of Europe's first strong nation-states. Isabella also sought various ways to diminish the influence of the Cortes Generales in Castile, though Ferdinand was too thoroughly Catalan to do anything of the sort with the equivalent systems in the Crown of Aragon. Even after his death and the union of the crowns under one monarch, the Aragonese, Catalan, and Valencian cortes (Catalan/Valencian: corts) retained significant power in their respective regions. Further, the monarchs continued ruling through a form of medieval contractualism, which made their rule pre-modern in a few ways. One of those is that they traveled from town to town throughout the kingdom in order to promote loyalty, rather than possessing any single administrative center. Another is that each community and region was connected to them via loyalty to the crown, rather than bureaucratic ties.^[4]

Ferdinand and Isabella were noted for being the monarchs of the newly-united Spain at the dawn of the modern era. The Kings had a goal of completing the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula and to conquer the Muslim kingdom of Granada. The beginnings of a series of campaigns known as the Granada War began with the attack of Alhama de Granada. The attack was led by two Andalusian nobles Rodrigo Ponce de León and Diego de Merlo. The city fell to Andalusian forces in 1482. The Granada War was aided by Pope Sixtus IV by granting a tithe and implementing a crusade tax to invest in the war. After 10 years of many battles the Granada War ended in 1492 when the Emir Boabdil surrendered the keys of the Alhambra Palace in Granada to the Castilian soldiers.

Expulsion of non-Christians and Spanish Inquisition[link]

Ferdinand and Isabella ordered the expulsion from Spain of all Jews and Muslims.^[5] People who converted to Catholicism were not subject to expulsion, but between 1480 and 1492 hundreds of those who had converted (conversos and moriscos) were accused of secretly practising their original religion (crypto-Judaism or crypto-Islam) and arrested, imprisoned, interrogated under torture, and in many cases burned to death, in both Castile and Aragon.^{[citation needed]}

The Inquisition had been created in the twelfth century by Pope Lucius III to fight heresy in the south of what is now France. The Catholic Monarchs decided to introduce the Inquisition to Castile, and requested the Pope's assent. On 1 November 1478 Pope Sixtus IV published the Papal bull, Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus, through which the Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of Castile; it was later extended to all of Spain. The bull gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors. [unsourced paragraph]

During the reign of the Catholic Monarchs and long afterwards the Inquisition was active in persecuting people for offences such as crypto-Judaism, heresy, Protestantism, blasphemy, and bigamy. The last trial for crypto-Judaism was held in 1818.

In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella ordered segregation of communities to create closed quarters which eventually became what were later called "ghettos". This segregation, common at the time, also furthered economic pressures upon the Jews and other non-Christians by increasing taxes and social restrictions. Finally, in 1492, with the Alhambra Decree Jews in Spain were given four months by the monarchs to either convert to Catholicism or leave Spain. Tens of thousands of Jews departed from Spain to other lands such as Portugal, North Africa, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Later in 1492, Ferdinand issued a letter addressed to the Jews who had left Castile and Aragon, to invite them back to Spain if and only if they had become Christians. [unsourced paragraph]

Exploration[link]

Christopher Columbus

They authorized the expedition of Christopher Columbus, who was given the name of Admiral of the Ocean Sea by the monarchs, which brought knowledge of the Americas to Europe. Columbus' first expedition to the supposed Indies actually landed in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. He landed on the island of Guanahani, and called it San Salvador. He continued onto Cuba, naming it Juana, and finished his journey on the island of Santo Domingo, calling it La Española. His second trip began in 1493 in which he found more Caribbean islands including Puerto Rico. His main goal was to colonize the existing discoveries with the 1500 men that he had brought the second time around. Columbus finished his last expedition in 1498 and discovered Trinidad and the coast of present day Venezuela. The colonies Columbus established and conquests in the Americas in the decades to come would lead to an influx of wealth into Spain, filling the coffers of the new state that would prove to be the hegemony of Europe only until 1588, when the Spanish Armada disaster against England and Ireland led to the major decline of Spain as an imperial power in Europe.

Children and alliances[link]

Isabella ensured long-term political stability in Spain by arranging strategic marriages for each of her five children; political security was important for a country to be considered a great power. Her firstborn, a daughter named Isabella, married Afonso of Portugal, forging important ties between these two neighbouring countries and hopefully ensuring peace and future alliance. Joanna, Isabella’s second daughter, married Philip the Handsome, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. This ensured alliance with the Holy Roman Empire, a powerful, far-reaching territory which assured Spain’s future political security. Isabella’s first and only son, John, married Margaret of Austria, maintaining ties with the Habsburg dynasty, on which Spain relied heavily. Her fourth child, Maria, married Manuel I of Portugal, strengthening the link forged by her older sister’s marriage. Her fifth child, Catherine, firstly married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, and after his premature death, she married Henry VIII, King of England.

Motto and symbol[link]

Coat of Arms of the Catholic Monarchs

The Monarchs' joint motto was "Tanto monta, monta tanto". The motto was created by Antonio de Nebrija and was either an allusion to the Gordian Knot: Tanto monta, monta tanto, cortar como desatar ("It's one and the same, cutting or untying"), or an explanation of the equality of the monarchs: Tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernando ("It's one and the same, Isabella the same as Ferdinand")

Their symbol was el yugo y las flechas, a yoke, possibly a reference to the yoke tied with the Gordian knot, and a fasces (bundle) of arrows. Y and F are the initials of Ysabel (spelling at the time) and Fernando. This let otherwise illiterate peasants recognize the royal crest- similar consonance is used in stained glass. (This symbol was later used by the fascist, from fasces, Spanish political party Falange, which claimed to represent the inherited glory and the ideals of the Reyes Católicos.)

Death[link]

Coffins of the Catholic Monarchs in the Capilla Real

Isabella died in 1504. Ferdinand remarried Germaine of Foix; he died in 1516.

Citations[link]

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Catholic Monarchs

• Country Studies
• Elliott, J.H., Imperial Spain, 1469-1716 (1963; Pelican 1970)
• Edwards, John. Ferdinand and Isabella: Profiles in Power.Pearson Education. New York, New York. 2005.ISBN 0-582-21816-0.
• Edwards, John. The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs. Blackwell Publishers. Massachusetts, 2000. ISBN 0-631-22143-3.
• Kamen, Henry. Spain: 1469-1714 A Society of Conflict.Longman. New York, New York. 1991. ISBN 0-582-06723-5.

Joanna
Portrait by Juan de Flandes, c. 1500
Queen of Castile and León
Reign	26 November 1504 – 12 April 1555
Predecessors	Isabella I & Ferdinand V
Successor	Charles I
Co-rulers	Philip I Charles I
Queen of Aragon
Reign	23 January 1516 – 12 April 1555
Predecessor	Ferdinand II
Successor	Charles I
Co-ruler	Charles I
Spouse	Philip I of Castile
Issue
Eleanor, Queen of Portugal and France Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor Isabella, Queen of Denmark Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor Mary, Queen of Hungary Catherine, Queen of Portugal
House	House of Trastámara
Father	Ferdinand II of Aragon
Mother	Isabella I of Castile
Born	(1479-11-06)6 November 1479 Toledo, Spain
Died	12 April 1555(1555-04-12) (aged 75) Tordesillas, Spain
Burial	Capilla Real, Granada, Spain
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Joanna (6 November 1479 – 12 April 1555), nicknamed Joanna the Mad (Spanish: Juana la Loca), was the first queen regnant to reign over both the Crown of Castile (1504–55) and the Crown of Aragon (1516–55), a union which evolved into modern Spain.^[1] Besides the kingdoms of Spain, she also ruled the kingdoms of Sardinia, Sicily, and Naples in Italy; a vast colonial empire in the Americas; and was Countess of Burgundy and the consort of the Burgundian Netherlands, thus initiating Spanish interests there. She was the last monarch of the House of Trastámara and her marriage to Philip the Handsome initiated the rule of the Habsburgs in Spain. Throughout most of her long reign she was under the regency of either her husband, father or son, and she was long confined to a nunnery under the pretense of mental illness^{[citation needed]}.

Life as Princess[link]

Early life[link]

Juana around the time of her marriage, c. 1496. Juana was not just a great beauty in her youth, but one of the most educated women in Europe, fluent in several languages.

Joanna was born in the ancient Visigothic city of Toledo, the capital of the Kingdom of Castile. She was the third child and second daughter of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon of the royal House of Trastámara. Joanna was an intelligent child and student. In the Castilian court her main tutors were the Dominican priest Andrés de Miranda, the respected educator Beatriz Galindo who was a member of the queen's court, and her mother the queen. She was accomplished in religious studies, court etiquette, the arts of dance and music, and equestrian skills. Joanna mastered all of the Iberian Romance languages: Castilian, Leonese, Galician-Portuguese and Catalan. She also was fluent in French and Latin. She was trained and educated for a significant marriage that, as a royal family alliance, would extend the kingdoms' power and security as well as its influence and peaceful relations with other ruling powers. As an infanta she was not expected to be heiress to the throne of either Castile or Aragon, although through deaths she later inherited both.

Joanna was said to have been an extremely attractive woman during her youth. She had a fair complexion, blue eyes and her hair colour was between reddish-blonde and auburn; these were typical traits in the Trastámara family which descended from Peter I of Castile. English ambassadors at Valencia on 23 June 1505 attempted to give a detailed description of her appearance according to fifteen criteria though her clothing hampered their estimation.^[2]

Marriage[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2012)

In 1496, Joanna, at the age of sixteen, was betrothed to Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy (titular), in the region of Flanders in the Low Countries. Philip's parents were Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and his first wife, Duchess Mary of Burgundy. The marriage was one of a set of family alliances between the Habsburgs and the Trastámaras designed to strengthen both against growing French power.^{[citation needed]} Joanna entered a proxy marriage at the Palacio de los Vivero in the city of Valladolid, Castile (her parents had secretly married there in 1469). In August 1496 Joanna left from the port of Laredo in northern Spain on the Atlantic's Bay of Biscay. She would not see her mother or siblings again except for her younger sister Catherine of Aragon in 1506, who was then the Princess Dowager of Wales. She would see her father Ferdinand II again in the course of his ruthless efforts to prevent her and Philip from gaining and then from keeping their crowns.^{[citation needed]} Joanna began her journey to Flanders in the Low Countries, which consisted of parts of the present day Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany, on 22 August 1496. The formal marriage took place on 20 October 1496 in Lier^[3], north of present day Brussels. Between 1498 and 1507, she gave birth to six children; two emperors and four queens.^[4]

The marriage contract of Joanna and Philip (1496).

Joanna's life with Philip was rendered extremely unhappy by his infidelity and her political insecurity.^{[citation needed]} He consistently attempted to usurp her legal birthrights to power.^{[citation needed]} This led in no small part to rumors of her insanity, stoked by reports of her depressive or neurotic acts while she was imprisoned or manipulated by her husband.^{[citation needed]} Before her mother's death in 1504, husband and wife were already living apart.

Princess of Asturias[link]

The death of Joanna's brother John, the stillbirth of John's daughter and the deaths of Joanna's older sister Isabella and Isabella's son Miguel made Joanna heiress to the Spanish kingdoms. Her remaining siblings were Maria (1482–1517) and Catherine (1485–1536), younger than Joanna by three and six years, respectively. In 1502, the Castilian Cortes of Toro^[5][6] recognized Joanna as heiress to the Castilian throne and Philip as her consort. She was named Princess of Asturias, the title traditionally given to the heir of Castile.^[7] Also in 1502, the Aragonese Cortes gathered in Zaragoza to swear an oath to Joanna as heiress; however, the Archbishop of Saragossa expressed firmly that this oath could only establish jurisprudence by way of a formal agreement on the succession between the Cortes and the king.^[8][9]

In 1502, Philip, Joanna and a large part of the Burgundian court traveled to Spain for Joanna to receive fealty from the Cortes of Castile as Princess of Asturias, heiress to the Castilian throne, a journey chronicled in great detail by Antoon I van Lalaing (French: Antoine de Lalaing). Philip and the majority of the court returned to the Low Countries in the following year, leaving a pregnant Joanna in Madrid where she gave birth to her and Philip's fourth child, Ferdinand, later a central European monarch and Holy Roman Emperor as Ferdinand I.

Reign[link]

This portrait of Joanna was done in Flanders, ca 1500: it is a detail from the wings of the Last Judgement Triptych of Zierikzee, by the Master of Afflighem (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium)

Queen of Castile[link]

Succession[link]

Upon the death of her mother in November 1504, Joanna became Queen regnant of Castile and her husband jure uxoris its king. Joanna's father, Ferdinand II, lost his monarchical status in Castile although his wife's will permitted him to govern in Joanna's absence or, if Joanna was unwilling to rule herself, until Joanna's heir reached the age of 20. Ferdinand refused to accept this: he minted Castilian coins in the name of "Ferdinand and Joanna, King and Queen of Castile, Léon and Aragon," and, in early 1505, persuaded the Cortes that Joanna's "illness is such that the said Queen Doña Joanna our Lady cannot govern". The Cortes then appointed Ferdinand as Joanna's guardian and the kingdom's administrator and governor. However, her husband Philip the Handsome was unwilling to accept any threat to his chances of ruling Castile and also minted coins in the name of "Philip and Joanna, King and Queen of Castile, Léon and Archdukes of Austria, etc."^[10] In response, Ferdinand embarked upon a pro-French policy, marrying Germaine de Foix, niece of Louis XII of France (and his own great-niece), in the hope that she would produce a son to inherit Aragon and perhaps Castile.^[11]

Ferdinand's remarriage merely strengthened support for Philip and Joanna in Castile, and in late 1505, the pair decided to travel to Castile. Leaving Flanders on 10 January 1506, their ships were wrecked on the English coast and the couple were guests of Henry, Prince of Wales, later Henry VIII and Joanna's sister Catherine of Aragon at Windsor Castle. They weren't able to leave until 21 April by which time civil war was looming in Castile. Philip apparently considered landing in Andalusia and summoning the nobles to take up arms against Ferdinand in Aragon. Instead, he and Joanna landed at La Coruña on 26 April, whereupon the Castilian nobility abandoned Ferdinand en masse. Ferdinand met Philip at Villafáfila on 20 June 1506 and handed over the government of Castile to his "most beloved children", promising to retire to Aragon. Philip and Ferdinand then signed a second treaty, agreeing that Joanna's mental instability made her incapable of ruling and promising to exclude her from government. Ferdinand then proceeded to repudiate the agreement the same afternoon, declaring that Joanna should never be deprived of her rights as Queen Proprietress of Castile. A fortnight later, having come to no fresh agreement with Philip and thus effectively retaining his right to interfere if he considered his daughter's rights to have been infringed upon, he abandoned Castile for Aragon, leaving Philip to govern in Joanna's stead.^[12]

Philip's death[link]

By virtue of the agreement of Villafáfila, the procurators of the Cortes met in Valladolid, Castile on 9 July 1506. On 12 July,^[13] they swore allegiance to Philip I and Joanna together as King and Queen of Castile and León and to their son Charles, later Charles I of Castile, Leon and Aragon and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, as their heir-apparent.^[14] This arrangement only lasted for a few months. On 25 September 1506 Philip died suddenly of typhoid fever in the city of Burgos in Castile. Some suspected that he had been poisoned by his father-in-law Ferdinand II who had always disliked his foreign Habsburg origins and with whom he never wanted to share power. Joanna was pregnant with their sixth child, a daughter Catherine (1507–1578). By 20 December 1506 she was in the village of Torquemada in Castile, attempting to exercise her rights to rule alone in her own name as Queen of Castile. The country fell into disorder. Her son and heir-apparent, Charles, later Charles I, was a six-year old child being raised in his aunt's care in northern European Flanders; her father, Ferdinand II, remained in Aragon, allowing the crisis to grow. A regency council under Archbishop Cisneros was set up against the queen's orders but it was unable to manage the growing public disorder; plague and famine devastated the kingdom with supposedly half the population perishing of one or the other. The queen was unable to secure the funds required to assist her to protect her power. In the face of this, Ferdinand II returned to Castile in July 1507. His arrival coincided with a remission of the plague and famine, a development which quieted the instability and left an impression that his return had restored the health of the kingdom.^[15]

Father's regency[link]

Joanna and her husband with their Spanish subjects

Ferdinand II and Joanna met at Hornillos, Castile on 30 July 1507. Ferdinand then constrained her to yield up her power over the Kingdom of Castile and León to himself. On 17 August 1507 she summoned three members of the royal council and ordered them to inform the grandees, in her name, of her father Ferdinand II's return to power: "That they should go to receive his highness and serve him as they would her person and more." She refused to sign the instructions – a last gesture of defiance – and issued a statement that she did not, as queen regnant, endorse the surrender of her own royal power. Nonetheless, she was thereafter queen in name only and all documents, though issued in her name, were signed with Ferdinand's signature, "I the King". He was named administrator of the kingdom by the Cortes of Castile in 1510, and entrusted the government mainly to Archbishop Cisneros. He had Joanna confined in the Santa Clara convent in Tordesillas, near Valladolid in Castile, in February 1509 after having dismissed all of her faithful servants and having appointed a small retinue accountable to him alone.^[7] At this time, some accounts claim that she was insane or 'mad', and that she took her husband's corpse with her to Tordesillas to keep it close to her.^[12]

First Queen of Spain[link]

Succession as Queen of Aragon[link]

Ferdinand II ended his days embittered: his second marriage had failed to produce a surviving male heir leaving his daughter Joanna as his heiress-presumptive. Ferdinand resented that, upon his death, Castile and Aragon would effectively pass to his foreign-born-and-raised grandson Charles I, to whom he had transferred his hatred of Philip I. He had hoped that his younger grandson and namesake, Ferdinand I, who was Charles I's brother and had been born and raised in Castile, would succeed him. Ferdinand II had named Ferdinand as his heir-apparent in his will before being persuaded to revoke this bequest and rename Joanna and Charles I as his heirs-presumptive instead. When Ferdinand II died in 1516, the Kingdoms of Castile and León, and Aragon and their associated crowns and territories/colonies would pass to Joanna I and Charles I.^[16] With Charles I still in Flanders, Aragon was being governed after Ferdinand II's death by his bastard son, Alonso de Aragón. Meanwhile, Castile and León, already subjects of Joanna, were governed by Archbishop Cisneros as regent. A group of nobles, led by the Duke of Infantado, attempted to proclaim the Infante Ferdinand as King of Castile but the attempt failed.

Son's regency[link]

Joanna with two of her children (one of them being Charles I)

In October 1517, seventeen-year-old Charles I arrived in Asturias at the Bay of Biscay. On 4 November, he and his sister Eleanor met their mother Joanna at Tordesillas – there they secured from her the necessary authorization to allow Charles to rule as her co-King of Castile and León and of Aragon. Despite her acquiescence to his wishes her confinement would continue. The Castilian Cortes, meeting in Valladolid, spited Charles by addressing him only as Su Alteza ("Your Highness") and reserving Majestad ("Majesty") for Joanna.^[17] However, no one seriously considered rule by Joanna a realistic proposition.^[18]

Since Charles I now ruled the Kingdom of Aragon and its territories and the Kingdom of Castile and León and its territories, the two kingdoms were officially unified into one country: Spain, in 1519. King Charles I of Spain became, in addition, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V the same year, and was able to create the most powerful country in the world at the time by building on the achievements and colonial wealth of his mother's parents, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Catholic Monarchs.

Revolt of the Comuneros[link]

In 1520, the Revolt of the Comuneros broke out in response to the perceived foreign Habsburg influence over Castile through Charles V. The rebel leaders demanded that Castile be governed in accordance with the supposed practices of the Catholic Monarchs. In an attempt to legitimize their rebellion, the Comuneros turned to Joanna. As the 'on record' sovereign monarch, had she given written approval to the rebellion, it would have been legalized and would have triumphed. In an attempt to prevent this, Don Antonio de Rojas, Bishop of Mallorca, led a delegation of royal councilors to Tordesillas, asking Joanna to sign a document denouncing the Comuneros. She demurred, requesting that he present her specific provisions. Before this could be done the Comuneros in turn stormed the virtually undefended city and requested her support. The request prompted Adrian of Utrecht, the regent appointed by Charles V, to declare that Charles would lose Castile if she granted her support. Although she was sympathetic to the Comuneros, she was persuaded by Ochoa de Landa and her confessor Fray John of Avila that supporting the revolt would irreparably damage the country and her son's kingship and she therefore refused to sign a document granting her support.^[19] The Battle of Villalar confirmed that Charles would prevail over the revolt.

Forced confinement[link]

Real Monasterio de Santa Clara de Tordesillas

Charles ensured his domination and throne by having his mother confined for the rest of her life in the rooms of the Convent of Santa Clara in Tordesillas, Castile. Joanna's condition degenerated further. She apparently became convinced that some of the nuns of the convent wanted to kill her, a fear which was never proved. Reportedly it was difficult for her to eat, sleep, bathe, or change her clothes. Charles wrote to the Convent of Santa Clara caretakers: "It seems to me that the best and most suitable thing for you to do is to make sure that no person speaks with Her Majesty, for no good could come from it".^{[citation needed]}

Joanna had her youngest daughter, Catherine of Austria, with her during Ferdinand II's time as regent, 1507–1516. Her older daughter, Eleanor of Austria, had created a semblance of a household within the convent rooms. In her final years, Joanna's physical state began to rapidly decline with mobility ever more difficult.

Joanna died on Good Friday, 12 April 1555 at the age of 75 in the Convent of Santa Clara at Tordesillas.^[7] She is entombed in the Royal Chapel of Granada (la Capilla Real) in Spain alongside her parents Isabella I and Ferdinand II, her husband Philip I and her nephew Miguel da Paz, Prince of Asturias. A statue of her stands in Tordesillas and the convent in which she was confined for fifty years can be visited.

The Capilla Real in Granada, where Juana (Joanna) is entombed.

Coat of arms of Joanna as Queen of Castile

Mental health[link]

Most historians now agree that she had melancholia,^[20]:9 severe clinical depression,^[20]:9[21] a psychosis,^[21] or a case of inherited schizophrenia^[20]:9.^[21]There is debate about the diagnosis that she was mentally ill considering that her symptoms were aggravated by non-consensual confinement and control by others who had assumed her royal powers. To legitimize the claims of her husband, father, and son to the throne, Joanna was nominalized as Queen regnant of Castile, León, and Aragon until her death. It is possible that she inherited mental illness from her mother's family: her maternal grandmother Isabella of Portugal, Queen of Castile suffered from it in widowhood after her stepson exiled her to the castle of Arévalo in Ávila, Castile.^[20]:12[22]

Legacy in arts and letters[link]

The story of Queen Joanna attracted authors, composers and artists of the 19th century romanticist movement, with her qualities of unrequited love and moral fidelity. Later authors often focus on the grief-stricken woman and her mental illness. An incomplete list of these works follows:

• Felipe el Hermoso (1845) — Eusebio Asquerino and Gregorio Romero. A play in four acts.
• La Locura de Amor (1855) — Manuel Tamayo y Baus. Play
• Doña Juana la Loca (late 19th Cent.) — Emilio Serrano. Opera.
• Juana la Loca (1877) — Francisco Pradilla. Painting (shown above). Currently in the Prado museum of Madrid, Spain.
• Locura de amor (1948) — Juan de Orduña. Film.
• The Prisoner of Tordesillas (1959) — Lawrence Schoonover. Novel.
• La Loca (1979) — Gian Carlo Menotti. Opera.
• Mariner by the playwright Don Nigro. Play.
• Las Ruinas del Corazon (1999) — Eric Gamalinda. Poem.
• Juana la Loca (2001) — directed by Vicente Aranda and starring Pilar López de Ayala as Joanna, was nominated for 12 Goya Awards, and was released in the US as Mad Love. Based on La Locura de Amor by Manuel Tamayo y Baus.
• El Pergamino de la Seducción (2005) — Gioconda Belli. Novel in Spanish.
• The Last Queen (2007) — C.W. Gortner. Novel in English and Spanish

Children[link]

Ferdinand, the couple's younger son.

All Joanna's children except Mary had children. However, only Charles, Ferdinand, and Isabella have descendants today.

Ancestry[link]