Álvaro Pérez de Lara (died 15 September 1172) was a nobleman of the
Lara family. He was the youngest son of
Pedro González de Lara
Pedro González de Lara (died 16 October 1130) was a Castilian magnate. He served Alfonso VI as a young man, and later became the lover of Alfonso's heiress, Queen Urraca. He may have joined the First Crusade in the following of Raymond IV of T ...
. His mother was Eva, who may have been a daughter of
Pedro Froilaz de Traba, or perhaps a Frenchwoman. She was originally married to
García Ordóñez
García Ordóñez (died 29 May 1108), called de Nájera or de Cabra and Crispus or el Crespo de Grañón in the epic literature, was a Castilian magnate who ruled the Rioja, with his seat at Nájera, from 1080 until his death. He is famous in lit ...
, but was married to Pedro by November 1127 at the latest. Álvaro is mentioned in documents between 8 February 1141 and 10 May 1172. He held the ''
tenencia
In medieval and early modern Europe, a tenant-in-chief (or vassal-in-chief) was a person who held his lands under various forms of feudal land tenure directly from the king or territorial prince to whom he did homage, as opposed to holding them ...
'' of
Aguilar de Campóo
Aguilar de Campoo () is a town and municipality of Spain located in the North of province of Palencia, autonomous community of Castile and León. The River Pisuerga flows through its historic centre. Its 2011 population was 7741.
It is one of the ...
for a long time early in his career (1146–65). He also patronised the
Praemonstratensian monastery there. On 15 February 1149 he called himself ''filius comitis'' ("the count's son") in a document, perhaps to indicate his aspiration for a comital title. He is first recorded as a count (Latin ''comes''), the highest title granted in the kingdom, on 19 November 1166.
Early in 1160 he and his brothers
Manrique and
Nuño (Spanish) or ( Catalan) is a masculine given name of Latin origin (, , , and so on). Its Portuguese form is . Its patronymic is (). Already in the Middle Ages the name was being confused with the similar but distinct name Munio.
The meaning o ...
were defeated at the
Battle of Lobregal
The Battle of Lobregal took place in March 1160 between the House of Lara and its allies and the forces of the House of Castro under Fernando Rodríguez de Castro.Simon Barton (1997), ''The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century León and Castile'' (Camb ...
by the rival
Castro family in one of the most violent aristocratic feuds of twelfth-century Spain.
[Barton, 154.] He was also present with his brothers at the
Battle of Huete in the summer of 1164, where the Laras were defeated by the Castros a second time and Manrique was killed. During the latter part of his career, Álvaro ruled
Asturias de Santillana
Asturias de Santillana is a historical ''comarca'' whose territory in large part corresponded to the central and western part of today's autonomous community of Cantabria, as well as the extreme east of Asturias. Most of the province of Asturias ...
(1156–70) and briefly held the ''tenencia'' of
Burgos
Burgos () is a city in Spain located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is the capital and most populous municipality of the province of Burgos.
Burgos is situated in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, on the confluence of th ...
(1168), the top military post in the capital of
Castile. He also briefly held the ''tenencias'' of
Grajal (1162) and
Viesgo (1155).
Notes
References
*This article is based on Simon Barton (1997), ''The Aristocracy in Twelfth-century León and Castile'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), especially p. 229, which contains a brief ''curriculum vitae''.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lara, Alvaro Perez de
1172 deaths
Year of birth unknown
12th-century nobility from León and Castile
House of Lara