Alfonso I of Aragon - Madrid, Spain
N 40° 25.012 W 003° 41.155
30T E 441807 N 4474252
This statue of Alfonso (misspelled Alonso on the statue's base) I "El Battalador" (the Battler) is located in the Parque del Buen Retiro in Madrid, Spain. He was the founder of the Military Order of Monreal.
Waymark Code: WMV4FR
Location: Comunidad de Madrid, Spain
Date Posted: 02/21/2017
Views: 16
The statue is one of many statues of the Spanish monarchy located along the Paseo de la Argentina (more commonly known as the Paseo de las Estatuas or Statue Walk). The statues were built between 1750 and 1752 as decorations for the Royal Palace, but King Charles III ordered them removed because he thought they made the palace look too baroque.
This stone statue depicts Alfonso I standing with his left foot resting on a man's severed head. His left hand rests near his left hip. His right hand is raised air and he appears to be holding a scroll. He is dressed in a robe and a long cape and is wearing boots. He sports a beard and a mustache.
Etched on the statue's base:
Alonso 1°.
El Battalador
Rei de Aragon
M°. A°. de 1134
"Alfonso I (1073/1074 – 7 September 1134), called the Battler or the Warrior (Spanish: el Batallador), was the king of Aragon and Navarre from 1104 until his death in 1134. He was the second son of King Sancho Ramírez and successor of his brother Peter I. With his marriage to Urraca, queen regnant of Castile, León and Galicia, in 1109, he began to use, with some justification, the grandiose title Emperor of Spain, formerly employed by his father-in-law, Alfonso VI. Alfonso the Battler earned his sobriquet in the Reconquista. He won his greatest military successes in the middle Ebro, where he conquered Zaragoza in 1118 and took Ejea, Tudela, Calatayud, Borja, Tarazona, Daroca, and Monreal del Campo. He died in September 1134 after an unsuccessful battle with the Muslims at the Battle of Fraga.
Church relations
The king quarrelled with the church, and particularly the Cistercians, almost as violently as with his wife. As he defeated her, so he drove Archbishop Bernard into exile and expelled the monks of Sahagún. He was finally compelled to give way in Castile and León to his stepson, Alfonso VII of Castile, son of Urraca and her first husband. The intervention of Pope Calixtus II brought about an arrangement between the old man and his young namesake.
In 1122 in Belchite, he founded a confraternity of knights to fight against the Almoravids. It was the start of the military orders in Aragon. Years later, he organised a branch of the Militia Christi of the Holy Land at Monreal del Campo."
-- Wikipedia
King Alfonso the Battler is listed as the Founder of the Military Order of Monreal on the Wikipedia Military Order List (visit link).