Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, 1st Duke of the Infantado
Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y Figueroa, 1st Duke of the Infantado, or Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y Suarez de Figueroa (Guadalajara, Castile, 25 September 1417 – Manzanares el Real, Spain, 25 January 1479) was a Spanish noble. Biography He was the eldest son of the well known literary man of the 15th century, Íñigo López de Mendoza y Lasso de la Vega, (1398–1458), 1st marquis of Santillana since 1447. He became 2nd marquis of Santillana when his father died in 1458. The title Duke of the Infantado was awarded to him by the Catholic Monarchs, Fernando II de Aragon and Isabel I of Castile, on 22 July 1475. This was one of the most important duchies in Spain: around 1535, it was associated to the personal lives of some 90,000 vassal families, perhaps about 3-4% of the people from the whole Peninsular kingdoms constituting by then the actual country described as Spain. At that time, that was an enormous number of people. American conquerors, European and American regions Viceroys, on areas adding up to several hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, cities and extensive territorial areas names, bishops and cardinals of the Catholic Church stem out and settled in