He was also Chief Justice of the King, Captain General of the frontier of Navarre and Ecija, mayor of Seville and the Kingdom of Murcia and commander of the Castle of Burgos.
[3] Isabel de Guzmán y Ayala granted her husband Pedro the donation of the town of Olvera (Cádiz), as a dowry in a document dated August 9, 1407.
[21] Álvaro de Luna, who had assumed an important position in the government of King Juan II, offered himself as a mediator between the royal houses.
[22] Alvaro de Luna continued with a strategic policy of ruling as valid of King Juan II and strengthening his personal power.
[23] By royal privilege of April 11, 1420, King John II confirmed to Pedro de Zúñiga the office of Alcalde Mayor of Seville.
Pedro received the lordship of Candeleda,[27] by royal privilege of September 6, 1423, the estates of Ruy López Dávalos, former constable of Castile, located in Puebla de Alcocer, Badajoz, and in the surrounding area,[28] as well as the goods confiscated from García Manrique.
[31] The infant, the future King Henry IV of Castile, was born in Valladolid on January 5, 1425, with Alvaro de Luna as his godfather.
[33] King John II, in a letter dated November 23, 1425, pardoned Pedro and his friends and relatives, for freeing Prince Henry of Aragon from prison.
[44] The wedding of the constable Álvaro de Luna, already a widower, with his second wife Juana Pimentel, daughter of the Count of Benavente, celebrated in Palencia on January 27, 1431, served as a pretext to confirm the reconciliation of the constable with the noble oligarchy, composed of prominent members of the Luna, Manrique, Enríquez, Pimentel, Zúñiga, Velasco, Mendoza, Carrillo, Toledo and Guzmán lineages.
[45] The valid Álvaro de Luna decided to resume the fight against the kingdom of Granada, to punish Emir Muhammad IX "the Left Handed".
[48] On Sunday, July 1, 1431, Luis de Guzmán, Master of Calatrava, who was in charge of the royal guard, was surprised by the Moors.
As a result of this victory, the army of King Juan of Navarre joined him and the valid Álvaro de Luna capitulated without help.
[60] The heads of the Castilian oligarchic clans, members of the League of Nobles, Fadrique Enriquez, Admiral of Castile, Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, Count of Haro, Pedro de Zuñiga, Count of Ledesma, Rodrigo Alonso Pimentel, Count of Benavente, Pedro Manrique, Mayor adelantado of Leon, Íñigo López de Mendoza and Enrique, Prince of Aragon, Lord of Santiago, celebrated a pact with Maria, Queen of Castile, and Juan, King of Navarre, on January 30, 1440, in which they promised and bound themselves to be good and faithful friends to each other in the service of King Juan II of Castile.
In September 1440, the Cortes published an extensive program that recognized and redefined the functions of the organs of the monarchy: the Council of the Crown, the Audiencia and the Courts.
[63][64] King Juan II granted Pedro de Zúñiga the city of Trujillo, Cáceres, in exchange for the city of Ledesma, La Rioja, with an oath of inheritance and the title of Count, in a privilege dated October 22, 1440,[65] and by Royal Decree of November 4, 1440, he confirmed that he had given Pedro de Zúñiga, by oath of inheritance, the city of Trujillo with the title of Count and the villages of Cañamero and Berzocana (Cáceres), in exchange for the county of Ledesma, which was restored to Prince Enrique of Aragon in 1440.
In April 1441, Pedro, Count of Ledesma, and his kinsmen were defeated in Extremadura by the Lord of Alcántara, Gutierre de Sotomayor.
The cortes were purged of the supporters of the valid, the royal council was reorganized, composed of three grandes, two prelates, two knights and four doctors, it was decided to help the queen of Portugal, cousin of King John II, to recover her throne.
The victory of the nobility only served to satisfy a simple substitution of factions, without establishing a stable oligarchic political regime on a legal basis.
[71] InIn the course of the 15th century, the municipalities lost their administrative freedom and were replaced by very powerful feudal states, such as that of Stúñiga, but without in any way changing the way of life of the towns.
[74] Pedro, Count of Plasencia, his sons Álvaro and Diego, as well as Pedro Fernández de Velasco, Count of Haro, and his brother Fernando, signed a confederation on September 21, 1443, to free King John II from the oppression in which he found himself, promising to help each other until the king was free and the kingdom was pacified.
[76] In the unexpected battle of Olmedo, fought on May 19, 1445, initiated by a skirmish between Rodrigo Manrique and Enrique, Prince of Asturias, the united armies of King Juan II of Castile, the valid Álvaro de Luna and the nobles defeated the armies of King Juan II of Aragon and Navarre.
[78] King John II contracted his second marriage at the age of 42 with Princess Isabella of Portugal at the instigation and negotiation of his valid Alvaro de Luna.
[79] In the coup d'état of Záfraga, the day of the reconciliation between King John II and his son, the Prince of Asturias, Enrique, which took place on May 11, 1448, several nobles were imprisoned by order of the valid Álvaro de Luna, which meant a declaration of war on the nobility.
The reconciliation of Álvaro de Luna with the nobility was sworn in Tordesillas on February 21, 1451, and confirmed by King John II of Castile on March 10, 1451.
King Jaume II of Castile, tormented by doubts and hesitations, finally signed the order to arrest the valid and his followers on April 3.
[73] Upon the death of his father Diego in 1417, he came to inherit and was II Lord of Béjar, Miranda del Castañar, Cáceres, Trujillo, Curiel, Candeleda, la Puebla de Santiago, and other towns.
[85] From May 1430, Pedro had to endure long civil litigation with Enrique de Guzmán, II Count of Niebla, over the ownership of the land of La Algaba, Seville.
[91] ope Nicholas V, by Apostolic Letter of January 12, 1447, confirmed to Pedro the possession of the Tercias of the Archpriesthood of Peñafiel, Valladolid, which his father Diego had.
[93] The King Juan II of Castile by royal faculty of August 9, 1453 grants license to Pedro and his wife Isabel so that they can found mayorazgos of all their goods.
[95] Other chroniclers characterize him as a man of good sense, of few words, an industrious gentleman, brave, persevering, kind, just, a lover of the arts and sciences, and who surrounded himself with men of merit.