Diego Colón

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Diego Colón (1479/1480 Porto Santo - February 23, 1526, Montalbán) was the son of Christopher Columbus and viceroy of the Indies.

Diego was made a page at the Spanish court in 1492, when his father embarked on his first voyage. He spent most of his adult life trying to regain the titles and privileges that his father had been granted for his explorations and then stripped of in 1500. He was greatly aided in this goal by his marriage to María Álvarez de Toledo, niece of the Duke of Alba, who was King Ferdinand's cousin. In 1508, he was named governor of the Indies, the post his father had previously held. He continued to fight for the remainder of his father's titles, and was made viceroy of the Indies in May, 1511. He continued to resent enroachments on his power and to fight for all of his father's privileges thereafter and made trips to Spain in 1515 and 1523 to plead his case without success. After his death, a compromise was reached in 1536 in which his son Luis was named admiral of the Indies and renounced all other rights for a perpetual annuity of 10,000 ducats, the island of Jamaica as a fief, an estate of 25 square leagues on the Isthmus of Panama, and the titles of Duke de Veragua and Marquis de Jamaica.