Bilbao

The town's rise was written into its charters. In 1310 Diego's niece María Díaz de Haro, the new lady of Biscay, ordered that the road from Orduña to Bermeo, the lordship's main trade route, cross the river at Bilbao's San Antón bridge, so that every load of Castilian goods bound for the sea now passed through the town instead of the old chief port of Bermeo. Two centuries later the merchants won their own court and guild, the Consulado, whose ordinances Queen Joanna approved in 1511, and the wool and iron trade with Flanders and England ran through their hands.

In the 19th century it was war that tested the town. French troops stormed and sacked Bilbao in 1808, and in the first Carlist war it held out as a liberal stronghold. The Carlist commander Zumalacárregui was mortally wounded besieging it in 1835, and a second siege in 1836 ended when Baldomero Espartero broke the Carlist lines at Luchana and relieved the town on Christmas Day, after which Bilbao took the title of "Unbeaten".