Lara

The House of Lara, named for Lara de los Infantes, Burgos, where Gonzalo Núñez is first documented around 1100, grew into a great magnate lineage of Castile. In the twelfth century Pedro González backed Queen Urraca against Alfonso I of Aragon; Pérez de Lara brothers disputed the regency in Alfonso VIII's minority.

Opposition ran in the family: Nuño González led a noble league against Alfonso X in 1270, Juan Núñez I fled to France after resisting Sancho IV, and Juan Núñez III repeatedly rebelled against Alfonso XI. Younger son Pedro Manrique de Lara inherited the Narbonne viscounty beyond the Pyrenees after 1192, founding a Languedoc branch with kin at Foix and Aragon.

In Castile the family backed Henry of Trastámara, was dispossessed by Peter I, and recovered its lands under Henry II. The senior male line died out mid fourteenth century, its inheritance passing through daughters; the Manrique de Lara cadet branch endured, producing grandees such as the Dukes of Nájera and the fifteenth-century poet Jorge Manrique.