Orígenes de los Fernández de Córdova

The history of Spain is marked by a lineage: that of the Fernández de Córdova/ba. Only in the directory of biographies of the Royal Academy of History there are 144 entries of the numerous illustrious characters who have held the surname and who occupy an important place in some of the most relevant pages of our past. Although the best known is Gonzalo Fernández de Córdova, the Great Captain, he is, in reality, only one of the outstanding protagonists in a lineage that has brilliant representatives who, over the centuries, have excelled in the political sphere, military, social, cultural, economic and even religious. Clemente Fernández de Córdova y Lubián -who has thoroughly and rigorously studied this family, to which he is proud to belong- invites us to a revealing tour of some of the most relevant and controversial chapters in the history of the emblematic surname, such as the origin of the dynasty, the Lawsuit of Villaseca or the family foundation of Santa María de los Huérfanos. Likewise, it offers us the profile of some of its most distinguished members, as is the case of Don Ricardo Martel y Fernández de Córdova, IX Count of Torres Cabrera and VII Count of Menado Alto and their outstanding work in the colony of Santa Isabel de Alcolea. And, finally, it also provides us with documents of great value, such as the detailed family trees, both of the ancestral origin of the surname in the 8th century, and those of each of the four great branches in which the lineage was divided between the middle of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, from which come each and every one of those who today bear the famous surname.