History
Spain On This Day - September 17
By m.p.
Sep 17, 2007 - 7:21 AM

In 1497 Don Pedro de Estopiñán took the city of Melilla, then part of the Kingdom of Fez, in the name of the Duke of Medina Sidonia for the Kingdom of Castile.

The Spanish writer and poet, Francisco de Quevedo, was born in Villanueva de los Infantes, Ciudad Real, in 1580, and four centuries later, Álvaro Fuentes Ibarz, bass guitarist with the group ‘La Oreja de Van Gogh, was born in Guecho, Vizcaya province, in 1975.

Noted Spaniards who died on 17th September include, in 1665, King Felipe IV, whose reign saw the decline of Spain as a world power, the poet, Tomás de Irarte in 1791, and Pedro Menéndez de Áviles, who was the first Spanish governor of Spanish Florida. He died in 1674.