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- Biochemist Frederick Sanger, 1918
- Composer Salomon Jadassohn, 1831
- King of Castilla y León Alfonso XI el Justiciero, 1311
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Alfonso XI de Castilla, el Justiciero (Salamanca, 13 August 1311 – Gibraltar, 26 March 1350) was the king of Castile, León and Galicia, the son of Ferdinand IV of Castile and his wife Constance of Portugal, and the great - grandson of Alfonso X el Sabio. Upon his father's death in 1312, several disputes ensued over who would hold regency, which were resolved in 1313. His grandmother Doña María de Molina, his mother Doña Constanza and the infantes Don Juan, the king's great - uncle, and Don Pedro, the king's uncle, assumed regency. Doña Constanza died first in 18 November 1313, followed by Don Juan and Don Pedro during a military campaign against Granada in 1319, which left Doña María de Molina as the only regent until her death in 1 July 1321. Since Don Juan's and Don Pedro's deaths in 1939, infante Don Felipe (son of Ferdinand IV and María de Molina, thus brother of the late infante Don Pedro), Don Juan Manuel (the king's second - degree uncle by virtue of being Ferdinand III's grandson) and Don Juan el Tuerto (the late Don Juan's son and the king's second - degree uncle) split the kingdom among themselves according to their aspirations for regency, even as it was being looted by moors and Levantine nobility. Once Alfonso was declared adult in 1325, he began a reign that would serve to strengthen royal power. His achievements include solving the problems of the Gibraltar Strait and the conquest of Algeciras.
Alfonso was the son of Ferdinand IV and Constance of Portugal, and the grandson of María de Molina, who served as regent since he was one year old until he attained adulthood at 15 in 1325.
As soon as he occupied the throne, he began working hard to strengthen royal power by dividing his enemies. His early display of ruling skills included the unhesitating execution of possible opposers (Don Juan el Tuerto in 1326, among others).
He managed to extend the limits of his kingdom to the Strait of Gibraltar after the important victory at the Battle of Salado against the Marinid Dynasty in 1340 and the conquest of the Kingdom of Algeciras in 1344. Once that conflict was resolved, he redirected all his Reconquista efforts to fighting the Moor king of Granada.
He is variously known among Castilian kings as the Avenger or the Implacable, and as "He of Salado River." The first two names he earned by the ferocity with which he repressed the disorder of the nobles after a long minority; the third by his victory in the Battle of Rio Salado over the last formidable Marinid invasion of Iberian Peninsula in 1340.
Alfonso XI never went to the insane lengths of his son Peter of Castile, but he could be bloody in his methods. He killed for reasons of state without any form of trial. He openly neglected his wife, Maria of Portugal, and had an ostentatious passion for Eleanor of Guzman, who bore him ten children. This set Peter an example which he failed to
better. It may be that his early death, during the Great Plague of
1350, at the Siege of Gibraltar,
averted a desperate struggle with Peter, though it was a
misfortune in that it removed a ruler of eminent capacity, who
understood his subjects well enough not to go too far. Alfonso
XI first married Costanza Manuel of Castile on 1325, but divorced her
two years later. His second marriage, on 1328, was to Maria of Portugal, daughter of Alfonso IV of Portugal. They had two children. By his mistress, Eleanor of Guzman, he had ten children. After Alfonso's death, his widow Maria had Eleanor arrested and later killed.
