Muño Alfonso

Who was Muño Alfonso?

Munio or Muño Alfonso was a Galician nobleman and military leader in the Reconquista, the governor of Toledo under Alfonso VII. He is the hero of the second book of the anonymous Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris, a contemporary history of the Alfonso's reign. He was also the inspiration and historical basis for the play Munio Alfonso, the second by Cuban playwright Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, first staged in Madrid in 1844.

At some point—the Chronica does not say when—Muño murdered his own legitimate daughter because she was "consorting with a certain young man". After repenting of the act he sought to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem but, at Alfonso's urging, the Archbishop of Toledo, Raymond de Sauvetât, forbid him to go, instead requiring him to engage in continual warfare with the Andalusian Muslims as a penance.

Muño is first recorded under the year 1131 as the castellan of the castle of Mora in the Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris. In that year an Almoravid army under Farax, governor of Calatrava, and Ali, governor of San Esteban, penetrated the Tajo valley and captured the then governor of Toledo, Gutierre Armíldez, at Alamín near Escalona, and killed him. The governors of Escalona, Domingo and Diego Álvarez, were killed in another skirmish, and the governor of Hita, Fernando Fernández was also defeated on the same campaign. Muño was captured on this expedition and imprisoned in Córdoba. There he was tortured and deprived of food and drink until he was able to ransom himself after a few days with a large sum of gold, silver, livestock, and arms. He returned first to Toledo, then to Mora.