Zaragoza

The same city was where Aragon's nobles tried to bind their kings, and where they lost. Since 1287 the Union of the nobles had met here under a privilege that let them refuse obedience to a king who broke the kingdom's laws. In 1348 Peter IV crushed the Union at Épila and had the privilege torn up and burned in Zaragoza's Dominican convent. Aragon kept its fueros and its Justicia, the judge who could shelter a subject from royal officers, but the crown no longer bargained with the nobles as equals.

The Justicia's shelter was put to the test in 1591. Antonio Pérez, Philip II's disgraced secretary, fled to Zaragoza and placed himself under its protection, and when the king tried to move him to the Inquisition's prison the city rose and Pérez escaped to France. Castilian troops then entered Zaragoza unopposed, and on 20 December Philip had the 27-year-old Justicia, Juan de Lanuza, beheaded without trial. A century later Zaragoza sided with Archduke Charles in the War of the Spanish Succession, and after Bourbon troops took the city in 1707, Philip V abolished the fueros of Aragon altogether.