The Best Mayor, The King (El mejor alcalde, el rey) is a play by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega, written between 1620 and 1623, according to the dating proposed by Morley and Bruerton. It was published in 1635 in the twenty-first part of de Vega's comedies.
The action occurs in the early 12th century Galicia during the reign of Alfonso VII. Sancho de Roelas, a nobleman who has fallen on hard times, announces to his lord Tello de Neira his intention to marry Elvira de Olite, also of impoverished noble lineage. Don Tello offers to be best man at the wedding but on seeing Elvira falls in love with her beauty and kidnaps her. She refuses to have sex with him and Sancho travels to Leon to get Alfonso's help. Alfonso finally comes to Tello's manor-house incognito and – after revealing his identity and finding out that Tello has raped Elvira – forces him to marry Elvira. He then executes Tello, restoring Elvira's honour and endowing her with half of Tello's estate.
It is from the 'villano honrado' (honest villain) genre, which involves a peasant fighting the abuses of a nobleman and the king finally giving him justice, restoring his honour and punishing the offender nobleman with death. In this play, the villain is Sancho de Roelas and the nobleman is Don Tello or Tello de Neira, who abducts and rapes Sancho's fiancée. It is also a historical drama since (as one character states at the end of the play) it is based on an anecdote told in Florián de Ocampo's Crónica de España, which was in de Vega's time considered as an edition of the Estoria de España .
The play was adapted into the 1974 Rafael Gil movie The King is the Best Mayor .
Alfonso V, called the Noble, was King of León from 999 to 1028. Like other kings of León, he used the title emperor to assert his standing among the Christian rulers of Spain. He succeeded his father, Bermudo II, in 999. His mother Elvira García and count Menendo González, who raised him in Galicia, acted as his co-regents. Upon the count's death in 1008, Alfonso ruled on his own.
Alfonso VI, nicknamed the Brave or the Valiant, was king of León (1065–1109), Galicia (1071–1109), and Castile (1072–1109).
Henry II, called Henry of Trastámara or the Fratricidal, was the first King of Castile and León from the House of Trastámara. He became king in 1369 by defeating his half-brother Peter the Cruel, after numerous rebellions and battles. As king he was involved in the Fernandine Wars and the Hundred Years' War.
García Sánchez II, was King of Pamplona and Count of Aragon from 994 until his death c. 1000. He was the eldest son of Sancho II of Pamplona and Urraca Fernández and the second Pamplonese monarch to also hold the title of count of Aragon. Modern historians refer to him as the Tremulous, though this appellation likely originally applied to his grandfather, García Sánchez I of Pamplona.
Leonor (Eleanor) de Guzmán y Ponce de León (1310–1351) was a Castilian noblewoman. After about 1330, she became the long-term mistress and favourite of Alfonso XI, with whom she had the illegitimate son Henry "the Fratricidal", future first monarch of the House of Trastámara. She held the lordship of Medina-Sidonia until she fell from grace in the wake of Alfonso's death in 1350. She was then executed by her enemies.
Bermudo III or Vermudo III was the king of León from 1028 until his death. He was a son of Alfonso V of León by his first wife Elvira Menéndez, and was the last scion of Peter of Cantabria to rule in the Leonese kingdom. Like several of his predecessors, he sometimes carried the imperial title: in 1030 he appears as regni imperii Ueremundo principis; in 1029/1032 as imperator domnus Veremudius in Gallecia; and in 1034 as regni imperii Veremundus rex Legionensis. He was a child when he succeeded his father. In 1034 he was chased from his throne by King Sancho III of Pamplona and forced to take refuge in Galicia. He returned to power, but was defeated and killed fighting against his brother-in-law, Ferdinand of Castile, in the battle of Tamarón.
Alonso Pérez de Guzmán (1256–1309), known as Guzmán el Bueno, was a Spanish nobleman and hero of Spain during the medieval period, the founder of the line from which the Dukes of Medina Sidonia descend.
Sancha of León was a princess and queen of León. She was married to Ferdinand I, the Count of Castile who later became King of León after having killed Sancha's brother in battle. She and her husband commissioned the Crucifix of Ferdinand and Sancha.
The Spanish Gypsy is an English Jacobean tragicomedy, dating from around 1623. The play was likely a collaboration between several dramatists, including Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford. Like Shakespeare's lost play Cardenio, The Spanish Gypsy is an English reworking of the novellas of Miguel de Cervantes, combining two of Cervantes' Novelas Ejemplares into a single drama.
María Alfonso Téllez de Meneses, known as María de Molina, was queen consort of Castile and León from 1284 to 1295 by marriage to Sancho IV of Castile, and served as regent for her minor son Ferdinand IV and later her grandson Alfonso XI of Castile (1312-1321).
Teresa Fernández de Traba was the Queen consort of León (1178–1180) during the reign of Ferdinand II.
Spanish Baroque literature is the literature written in Spain during the Baroque, which occurred during the 17th century in which prose writers such as Baltasar Gracián and Francisco de Quevedo, playwrights such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, or the poetic production of the aforementioned Francisco de Quevedo, Lope de Vega and Luis de Góngora reached their zenith. Spanish Baroque literature is a period of writing which begins approximately with the first works of Luis de Góngora and Lope de Vega, in the 1580s, and continues into the late 17th century.
Urraca of Zamora was a Leonese infanta, one of the five children of Ferdinand I the Great, who received the city of Zamora as her inheritance and exercised palatine authority in it. Her story was romanticized in the cantar de gesta called the Cantar de Mio Cid, and Robert Southey's Chronicle of the Cid. Urraca's mother was Sancha of León.
Manrique Pérez de Lara was a magnate of the Kingdom of Castile and its regent from 1158 until his death. He was a leading figure of the House of Lara and one of the most important counsellors and generals of three successive Castilian monarchs: Alfonso VII (1126–57), Sancho III (1157–58) and Alfonso VIII (1158–1214).
Garci Lasso de la Vega II, also known as “El Joven” was the son of Garci Lasso de la Vega "El Viejo" with his first wife, Juana de Castañeda. He commanded Castillian troops against Navarra in the Battle of Río Salado of 1334. After distinguishing his valor, he was appointed as the highest royal official to the court of Fadrique Alfonso de Castilla, master of the Order of Santiago and son of Alfonso XI of Castile. He was later appointed Adelantado of Castile through the patronage of Juan Núñez de Lara. After the death of his patron, he sought refuge in Burgos, fearing the wrath of Juan Alfonso de Alburquerque. King Peter the Cruel and his henchmen captured him there where he suffered an atrocious death witnessed by the king in 1351, as reported by Pero López de Ayala in his chronicle on the reign of this monarch.
Pedro Ruiz de Villegas y Cevallos II was a Spanish noble baron in the service of the Kingdom of Castile and a member of the Order of Santiago. He was the head of the House of Villegas and a descendant of the houses of Cevallos and of Lucio. As the majorat of his own heraldic crest, he received titles over Villegas, Manquillos, Castillo Pedroso, Moñux, Pedrosa del Páramo, Manciles, Valdegómez and the palace of Sasamón. For his service in the First Castilian Civil War, and his role in the destruction of the Blanche of Bourbon league he received the castle of Caracena, and was named high adelantado of Castile in 1354. A year later, Peter of Castile would execute him in the village of Medina del Campo.
Alfonso Téllez de Meneses, known as el Viejo, was a nobleman of Castile and a participant in the key Reconquista battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. He was the second Lord of Meneses, Lord of Cea, Grajal, Montalbán, and, through his second wife, first Lord of Alburquerque.
Gutierre Rodríguez de Castro also known as Gutierre Ruiz de Castro and nicknamed el Escalabrado was a Castilian nobleman, member of the House of Castro as the son of Rodrigo Fernández de Castro and his wife Elo Álvarez, daughter of Álvar Fáñez and his wife Mayor Pérez, daughter of Count Pedro Ansúrez.
Alberta was the queen consort of King Sancho II of Castile (1065–1072).
Mayor Alfonso de Meneses was a Castilian noblewoman. She was the daughter of Alfonso Téllez de Meneses and Elvira Rodríguez. She had two brothers, Tello II and Alfonso, and a sister, Teresa. She was raised at the court of Ferdinand III of Castile and married his younger brother, Alfonso de Molina, around 1246. From her father and her brothers she inherited the lordships of Meneses, Montealegre and Tiedra. With Alfonso de Molina, she had a son, also Alfonso, who inherited Meneses, and a daughter, María de Molina, who married the future King Sancho IV.