Segovia

By the end of the Middle Ages Segovia no longer only sold its wool but wove it, and its cloth made the city rich enough to matter in Castile's politics. On 13 December 1474 Isabella I was proclaimed queen of Castile in its church of San Miguel. In 1520, like the other cloth towns of Castile, Segovia rose with the Comuneros under Juan Bravo and besieged the royalists who held the Alcázar; the old cathedral beside the fortress was wrecked in the fighting, and Charles V had its successor begun in 1525 in the heart of the town, well away from the castle walls. The looms kept working after the defeat and the city went on growing through the 16th century, until the plague of 1599 killed some 12,000 people and Segovia sank, with the rest of Castile, into a long decline.