Fernando Díaz

Who is Fernando Díaz?

Fernando Díaz was a Spanish nobleman and military leader in the Kingdom of León, the most powerful Asturian magnate of the period. He held the highest rank in the kingdom, that of count, from at least 24 September 1089. He was the last Count of Asturias de Oviedo and was succeeded by a castellan, a novus homo, perhaps in an ecclesiastical–royal effort to curtail the power of the Asturian aristocracy.

Fernando was the second son of Diego Fernández and his second wife, Cristina Fernández, daughter of Fernando Gundemáriz and granddaughter of Gundemaro Pinióliz. His father and his elder brother Rodrigo before him were also Counts of Asturias. His younger sister Jimena was the wife of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, el Cid. Fernando's first wife was Goto González, the eldest daughter of Gonzalo Salvadórez and his first wife, Elvira Díaz. Goto was dead by July 1087 when Fernando, as an executor of her will, made a donation to the monastery of San Salvador de Oña of the land in Hermosilla inherited by Goto from her father and her uncle, Álvaro Salvadórez. By 31 July 1096, Fernando was married to Enderquina Muñoz, a daughter of count Munio González.