Luna, Álvaro de (c. 1390–1453)

Spanish statesman and poet. The tutor of King John II of Castile, he became very powerful, and as constable from 1423 was the virtual ruler of Castile. The hostility of the king's second wife, Isabella of Portugal, brought about his downfall, and he was executed at Valladolid after a mock trial for witchcraft. His poems appeared in Cancionero de Baena in 1445.

An illegitimate member of a family of wealthy conversos (converts to Catholicism from Judaism), de Luna became the tutor of John II about 1410 and began his climb to power when the young John II of Castile came of age in 1419. Despite the hostility of the king's Trastámara cousins and their supporters among the old aristocracy, the king came to rely heavily on de Luna. Although driven from court by his opponents in 1427 and again in 1439, he returned on both occasions and consolidated his power. He fought and defeated the Moors in Granada in 1441, and after the Castilian defeat of the Aragonese at Olmedo in 1445 he was elected grand master of the Order of Santiago.

Among his writings was a treatise in defence of women, Libro de las virtuosas e claras mugeres (1446).