Alcalá de Henares

Alcalá de Henares lies on the Henares River east of Madrid, a former Roman Complutum that the archbishops of Toledo held as an estate from 1129. The Cortes of Castile met here in 1345 and 1348, and in 1390 John I of Castile died in an accident during a tournament at the Puerta de Burgos. In January 1486 Columbus met Isabella the Catholic in Alcalá for the first time to discuss his plan to reach Asia by sailing west.

Cardinal Cisneros founded the university in 1499 and remodelled the town in Renaissance style. Under him the scholars of Alcalá printed the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, whose volumes in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Aramaic appeared between 1514 and 1517. The town backed the Comuneros against Charles V in 1520–21 and was punished. Cervantes was baptised here on 9 October 1547. In 1836 a royal order of the regent queen moved the university to Madrid, and the town declined sharply.