Fernando Torres and Portugal

Fernando de Torres y Portugal and Mesía Venegas y Ponce de León (Villardompardo, Jaén, ? - Jaén, October 18, 1592) was a nobleman and Spanish colonial administrator. Member of an ancient lineage from the Jaén region and descendant of the Portuguese royal family, he was Lord of Villardompardo and Escañuela and, later, 1st Count of Villardompardo. He was also second lieutenant of Jaén, corregidor of Asturias and Salamanca, assistant of Seville (1578-1583) and viceroy of Peru (1585-1589).

Biography

Sancho Fortuniones is the first lord of Torres granted in 936 for marrying the infanta, daughter of King García of Navarre. Bernardino is Lord of Villardompardo, father of the 1st Count of Villardompardo, and married to Doña María Mesía-Carrillo and Ponce de León. Born in Jaén, on his father's side he was heir to the old House of Torres de Navarra, which was linked to the Portuguese nobility.

The house of Torres owned land in Jaén, Álava and Burgos as well as in Navarra. It included in Jaén the jurisdictions of Villardompardo and Escañuela, had its origin in Pedro Ruiz de Torres, advanced of Cazorla and mayor of the fortresses of Jaén, who supported Enrique II of Castilla in his fight against his brother Pedro I. Victorious Enrique II, He not only made Pedro Ruiz de Torres Lord, but also granted him important privileges (1371), which increased over time. Among those privileges were the right to collect from the dye, tannery, alabardería and soap store of the city of Jaén.

Pedro Ruiz de Torres married Isabel Méndez de Biedma and with her he had Fernando Ruiz de Torres. He in turn married Inés de Solier and had four children: Pedro, Carlos, Juan and María. The first died without descendants, so the lordship passed to Carlos de Torres. He married Guiomar Carrillo, with whom he had Teresa de Torres y Carrillo, who became Lady of Villardompardo. The lords of Villardompardo were linked with the Portuguese nobility through the marriage of María de Torres de Navarra y Solier with Fernando de Portugal, son of the infante don Dionisio de Portugal, lord of Cifuentes. From this union Dionis de Torres y Portugal was born, who assumed the lordship of Villardompardo in the absence of older heirs, and was the great-grandfather of our biographie, Fernando de Torres y Portugal.

On his mother's side he came from the illustrious House of Messia Carrillo (lords of La Guardia and Santofimia), which also benefited from many privileges acquired in medieval times.

Fernando de Torres y Portugal increased his position with the honorary position of senior lieutenant of Jaén, which the king granted him in perpetuity. Said investiture made him head of the militias, guardian of the keys to the city, bearer of the banner and one of the privileged few who could enter the council with a sword at his belt. No further details are known about his youth and intellectual training.

First services to the Crown

His first step in his ascending administrative career was as corregidor in the Principality of Asturias, and later in Salamanca, from 1565 to 1568. His good performance in both places and his influences at court made that on April 30, 1576 he was granted the title of count of Villardompardo and that in September 1578 he was appointed assistant of Seville. This last position was very important, similar to that of corregidor: as representative of the central power and head of the municipal corporation, he had a multitude of powers: military and civil, executive, legislative, and even judicial.

We know about the work he carried out as an assistant in Seville, from 1578 to 1583, thanks to a report that he himself wrote: «Relation of the things in which the count of Villar, an assistant who was from Seville, served His Majesty in five years or almost that he had the trade". This relationship has been studied by Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, who highlights some interesting aspects of the management of the count of Villar, of which we mention some:

• He was very concerned about the problems of doing so: he increased the Almojarifazgos and tried to obtain substantial donations and loans to help the king.
• During the war with Portugal he gave his full support to the troops who went and returned from the front of struggle: he accommodated a large number of soldiers from his own in Seville, attended the sick and wounded, and formed three companies.
• He took precautions to suppress the uprising of the Moors.
• He intervened in the transfer of the bodies of the princes to the new royal chapel.

However, there were no shortages of confrontations with the Inquisition, a problem that he would have again later, when he was already in Peru. In any case, after five years of management, this was highly valued in the residency trial that followed shortly after completing it, and it was essential for him to be appointed as viceroy of Peru. By then he was of very mature age.

Viceroy of Peru

The death of the viceroy of Peru, Martín Enríquez de Almansa, after a brief government (1584), surprised King Felipe II, who hastened to look for his successor. The names of various candidates were considered, such as the Marquis of Almazán, García Hurtado de Mendoza, the Count of Miranda and the Marquis of Velada. But the king was satisfied with none of these. Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza, Count of Coruña and Viceroy of New Spain, was then proposed, and his appointment was even extended, but for unknown reasons this was left without effect. Then other names arose, among them that of the Count of Villardompardo, who was finally chosen by Felipe II, against the opinion of his advisers, since they considered that his advanced age could be an impediment to fully carry out his work, as had happened with his predecessor. Apparently, the good performance of the count as Seville's assistant weighed on the king's criteria, particularly his treasury work.

On March 31, 1584, in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the decree investing the count of Villardompardo as viceroy, governor and captain general of Peru and president of the Royal Audience of Lima was signed. In October, the new viceroy set sail in Sanlúcar de Barrameda with a large procession of relatives and servants, including his son Jerónimo de Torres y Portugal, his grandson Fernando de Torres, his nephew Diego de Portugal and his brother politician Hernán Carrillo de Córdoba, the latter Captain General of the Sea and ancestor of the illustrious José Baquíjano y Carrillo. Although he hastened his journey, his poor health forced him to prolong some of his stages. He arrived in Panama early the following year and in May he embarked for Peru. He disembarked in Paita on June 11, 1585, continued his journey by land, and after passing through Piura and Trujillo, made his solemn entry into Lima on November 21, 1585.

Works and measures of his government

• On instructions received from the king, he began to order the administration of the Royal Treasury to increase the revenue collection and to contribute to the expenses that demanded the preparation of the Invincible Navy and the war of Flanders. In this regard, a fundamental point was to reorganize the system of exploitation of the Potosi silver mines, based on the mining mine, which did not fully meet its objective. It happened that the Indians refused to comply with the harvest, because of the serious and harmful nature of the trade. The viceroy then issued measures aimed at alleviating the situation of mitayos or operators, such as the abducting of basic necessities, the prohibition of employing jornaleros in non-mining work, among others. To ensure compliance with all these measures, he created the post of natural protector, a charge that his successor would incorporate them into the Royal Audience of Lima. All this reform, coupled with the use of the technique of amalgam with azogue, as well as the discoveries of new silver and azogue mines, made the production of argentiferous metal substantially increase. The virrey managed to send to Spain in four armed forces the sum 4,905,937 pesos, according to data from the López de Caravantes counter.
• While at the beginning of Potosi the profit of silver through the azogue increased production, at the same time the demand for the last metal grew, since much of it was was wasted by the rudimentary of the procedure. At the end of 1586, a miner, Carlos Corzo de Leca, began to use iron, saving according to a report, nine pounds of azogue of ten employed. The viceroy was initially interested in this new procedure, but then decided to suspend it, as the expenses were taken into account by the State.

Thomas Cavendish, English court.

• In anticipation of the incursions of the British pirates and corsairs, he ordered the armament of some ships and the founding of cannons for the coastal defenses, despite the shortage of molten teachers, as well as the necessary tin and copper. Thus it was possible to confront the fleet of the English admiral Thomas Cavendish, who for those years devastated the coasts of the Virreinate. Cavendish, called in the chronicles Tomás Candisk, sailed from his country in 1586 with three ships, and after founding Port Desire (now Puerto Deseado, Argentina), crossed the Strait of Magellan where he found only about fifteen men in the populations that founded years before Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, for the others had died of hunger and cold. Only one of them, named Tomé Hernández, was picked up by Cavendish. He entered the Pacific with particularly serious predations in Arica and Pisco (1587), and without approaching Callao, he continued to the north, persecuted by the Navy, which was unable to hunt them. The corsairs landed in Paita, which they looted and burned. Continuing his journey, Cavendish arrived on the island of Puná, where he suffered an ambush and lost a boat and some men; he then continued to Machala, to then enter Guatemala and Mexico. Near Acapulco aborted the Nao of China, well loaded with goods, spoil with which he was satisfied and began the return to his country.
• A very protested measure of his was the abolition in 1586 of the two ordinary mayors of Lima and his replacement by a corrector chosen by him, who was Francisco de Quiñones, the husband of Grimanesa de Mogrovejo (brother of Archbishop Toribio de Mogrovejo). This situation lasted only until the end of his viceroy, when the king allowed the city to regain its privilege of choosing its mayors.
• Another controversial measure was to seize the money of the Community Boxes in order to help the Crown in its European wars. These boxes, created by the Viceroy Toledo, existed in many Indian corrections and deposited the balances of the taxes paid by the Indians, as well as the property of the community, coming from the sales of their cattle or lands, amen of the salary that was no longer paid to the taxpayers as they were vacant. These boxes benefited the Indian, because of the money they paid the rate of the absent, sick and disabled, or completed it, when the taxes could not be met because of bad harvests or other causes. This decision also harmed the Church, benefiting part of those resources and provoked the protests of the Archbishop of Lima Toribio de Mogrovejo.
• As for the royal patronage, the foundation of the monastery of Santa Clara in Trujillo and the Franciscan monks' monastery in the village of Oropesa, near Huancavelica, stands out.
• Between 1585 and 1589 an epidemic of smallpox, measles or parotitis spread from Cuzco to the north, until it reached the Quito region. Evil was especially born among the Indians who died for thousands, especially the boys, as well as among the black slaves. In Lima, only 14 to 16 people died in the Santa Ana Hospital a day, within two months. In total some 3000 people died in Lima, and in Quito they died in the space of three months about 4,000 people. Several hospitals were established at the disposition of the Virrey in provinces so that the sick would not be removed from their villages. In 1588 another epidemic spread throughout the virreinate; this time it was the exantematic typhus that appeared in Cartagena de Indias, from where it was transmitted successively to Lima, Cuzco, Potosí and Chile, and also affected the indigenous population.

Cover of the book on the art and vocabulary of the 1586 Quechua printed in Lima, with the coat of arms of the virrey.

• On 9 July 1586 a fierce earthquake accompanied by a tsunami struck much of the coast of Peru. Lima and Callao suffered severe damage even though there was not much death of people. The Government Palace remained uninhabitable and immediately the virrey arranged to carry out the reconstruction works, which he put in charge of Pedro Fajardo.
• The virrey had an antagonistic relationship with the two limean inquisitors, Antonio Gutiérrez de Ulloa and Juan Ruiz de Prado, who reached a peak when they excommunicated him. It considered the Count of the Villar that under the mantle of the Holy Office "many exorbitances" were committed in matters of justice and that the inquisitors were excessively involved in the business of the governorship.
• He was presided over by the viceroy by the court of the Lima Inquisition, which took place on 30 November 1587. The flamenco Miguel del Pilar, accused of being Lutheran heretic, was burned. Another 32 inmates suffered mild sentences. The eye-catching note was that the inquisitors had a preferred place for the viceroy, which led him to be recriminated by the king for allowing him.
• During his virreinate the work was printed in Lima Art, and vocabulary in the general language of Peru called Quichua, and in the Spanish language: the most copious and elegant that until agora has impresso in 1586, whose author was Antonio Ricardo. There were later editions in Seville in 1603, and again in Lima (1614), in the impression of Francisco del Canto.

Scandal and end of his tenure

Fernando de Torres and Portugal, Conde de Villardompardo. Down, your rubric. Evaristo San Cristóval engraving.

The scandalous note of this viceroy's government was undoubtedly the revelations made by the Sevillian Juan Bello, secretary of the interior, when he was arrested by the Inquisition accused of blasphemy. Bello exposed the immoral conduct of the viceroy's close relatives, especially his son Jerónimo and his nephew Diego de Portugal, whom he accused of receiving money and gifts in exchange for influencing government decisions; He also made known the null respect that both young men had for the law, as well as their flirtations and love affairs with ladies from the Lima aristocracy.

The disclosure of this environment of immorality motivated the Spanish court to send a general visitor to Peru, who was the lawyer Alonso Fernández de Bonilla. However, on December 25, 1589, before this emissary arrived, the count of Villardompardo handed over command to García Hurtado de Mendoza (son of the former III Viceroy of Peru Marqués de Cañete). Then he retired to a Franciscan convent in the town of La Magdalena, and finally, he undertook a return trip to Spain on May 2, 1590. He arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 1592 and died that same year in the city of Seville.

Faithful, discreet and good man, Villar did not stand out for his gifts but, together, they make us appreciable. Neither the circumstances nor the time allowed him to perform any work pointed out, but he could leave Peru satisfied, because he had put the best of his will and intelligence in the service of the King and his subordinates. This is your best praise.

Rubén Vargas Ugarte

Offspring

Fernando was married twice: first to Francisca de Carvajal Osorio, daughter of the Lords of Jódar, and later, when he became a widower, to María Carrillo de Mendoza. From both marriages he had numerous offspring.

Writings

• Letter to the real officers of Potosi, on mines and other things.
• Letter to the corrector and real officers of Potosi, and diligences on the new benefit of the scourges discovered by Carlos Corzo.