Gregorio López de Tovar (Guadalupe, Spain 1496 - 1560) was a president of the Consejo de Indias

Consejo de Indias

The Council of the Indies, officially, the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies , was the most important administrative organ of the Spanish Empire, both in the Americas and in Asia, combining legislative, executive and judicial functions...

, humanist, jurist and lawyer for the Catholic Monarchs

Catholic Monarchs

The Catholic Monarchs is the collective title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; they were given a papal dispensation to deal with...

, Queen Isabella I of Castile

Isabella I of Castile

Isabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon brought stability to both kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. Later the two laid the foundations for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor...

 and King Ferdinand II of Aragon

Ferdinand II of Aragon

Ferdinand the Catholic was King of Aragon , Sicily , Naples , Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, jure uxoris King of Castile and then regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of...

.

His most important work, an annotation of the Siete Partidas

Siete Partidas

The Siete Partidas or simply Partidas was a Castilian statutory code first compiled during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile , with the intent of establishing a uniform body of normative rules for the kingdom. The codified and compiled text was originally called the Libro de las Leyes...

, a seven-part legal code compiled under the reign of Alfonso X, and which was followed for centuries in both Spain and Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

, is considered to be the authentic text of the medieval work of the Castilian

Kingdom of Castile

Kingdom of Castile was one of the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. It emerged as a political autonomous entity in the 9th century. It was called County of Castile and was held in vassalage from the Kingdom of León. Its name comes from the host of castles constructed in the region...

 king. The annotated copy contains Tovar's certification as of September 7, 1555 that it is a true copy of the earlier text.

Tovar served as mayor of the Puebla de Guadalupe, a municipality in the province of Cáceres

Cáceres, Spain

Cáceres is the capital of the same name province, in the autonomous community of Extremadura, Spain. , its population was 91,131 inhabitants. The municipio has a land area of 1,750.33 km², and is the largest in geographical extension in Spain....

. He married the niece of Conquistador

Conquistador

Conquistadors were Spanish soldiers, explorers, and adventurers who brought much of the Americas under the control of Spain in the 15th to 16th centuries, following Europe's discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492...

 Francisco Pizarro

Francisco Pizarro

Francisco Pizarro González, Marquess was a Spanish conquistador, conqueror of the Incan Empire, and founder of Lima, the modern-day capital of the Republic of Peru.-Early life:...

. He died in Guadalupe in 1560, and was buried in the city's Monasterio de Santa María (Monastery of Santa Maria). The front of his Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

-style palace survives to today.