page_title: History of Cagliari
section_title: Spanish Habsburg era
hierarchical_section_title: History of Cagliari / Spanish Habsburg era
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Vista di Cagliari
context_section_description: With the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Cagliari and the whole of Sardinia were bound more and more to the nascent Spanish state. The Catalan language was the official language of the Cortes of the Kingdom, but its active use gradually died out in the city, overwhelmed by Sardinian in everyday use in every social class, even in the nobility, and it was replaced by Spanish as the language of culture and government.
  The city remained the capital of the kingdom and the most wealthy and populous city, with its status of royal and autonomous city. In it the Viceroy lived, the Cortes, the Parliament, was called every ten years, the Royal Audience, the supreme judiciary, met. Besides being the main export centre for Sardinian goods, its port was an inevitable staging point in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean routes to the Iberian peninsula. It was equipped with a powerful defense system of ramparts and bastions, which transformed it into the key stronghold for controlling the western Mediterranean.
  In 1535 it received the visit of Emperor Charles V, right in the town harbor, where he gathered an impressive fleet with the aim to win over Tunisia. Cultural life was vibrant, far from provincial, perfectly integrated in the cultural atmosphere of Habsburg Europe. Here were born or lived people of high caliber such as Sigismund Arquer, scholar, theologian, jurist and geographer, who died at the stake in Toledo, charged with being a Lutheran; the lawyers John Dexart, Francis Bellit, Antonio Canales de Vega  and Francis Aleo; the physician Joan Thomas Porcell; the historian Giorgio Aleo; the theologian Dimas Serpi; Antonio Maria da Esterzili, author of the first play in Campidanese Sardinian; the writer Roderigo Hunno Baeza, author of "Caralis panegyricus", a poem in Latin, composed around 1516, in which he exalted the city of Cagliari; Jacinto de Arnal Bolea, author of the first novel set in Cagliari, El forastero; Juan Francisco Carmona; the writer and historian Salvatore Vidal; the poets Jose Delitala Y Castelvì and Joseph Zatrillas Vico; the political officer of the Spanish Empire Vincenzo Bacallar Y Sanna; and the Marquis of San Felipe. The latter was one of the founders of the Royal Spanish Academy and worked on the drafting of the first dictionary of the Castilian language.
  There was also a renowned school of painting known as "Stampace" from the name of the urban district where the shops were, which had its major representatives in Peter Cavaro, the son of Michael, Peter Raxis the elder, and Antiochus Mainas. In 1607 the University was established, as was the first public hospital. But the decadence that the Spanish Empire experienced in the second half of the seventeenth century also damaged the city and exposed it to a serious outbreak of plague in 1656, from which came by municipal vow the Feast of Sant'Efisio, still the most important religious event of the island.
caption: View of ancient Cagliari
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