Fernando Núñez de Lara

Fernando Núñez de Lara (fl. 1173–1219) was a count of the House of Lara. He spent most of career in the service of the Kingdom of Castile, but at times served the neighbouring Kingdom of León as well. He was a courtier, almost permanently present at court late in the reign of Alfonso VIII (1158–1214), whom he twice served as alférez, the highest military post in the kingdom, also fighting, with his brothers Álvaro and Gonzalo in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.

Fernando was the son of Nuño Pérez de Lara and Teresa Fernández de Traba, who after Nuño's death in 1177 married King Ferdinand II of León, taking her children from her first marriage to live at the court. Sometime before 1202 he married Mayor.

Fernando and Mayor had four children: Fernando (d. before June 1232); Álvaro (d. 1240), who married Infanta María Alfonso, illegitimate daughter of Alfonso IX of León and Teresa Gil de Soverosa, and by an unknown mistress fathered Teresa Álvarez, wife of Diego López de Salcedo; Sancha, wife of Ferdinand, a younger son of Afonso II of Portugal; and, Teresa, who married Count Ponç IV of Empúries.

The breadth of Fernando's power and influence is an apparent in a lists of territories he is known to have governed. Between 1173 and 1190 Fernando held the tenencias of Aguilar de Campoo (1173–90), Herrera (1173–88), Amaya (1175–90), Carrión (1175–90), and Avia (1176–88). Later he held those of Ubierna (1181–90), Tamariz (1181–95), Ordejón (1182–86), and Saldaña (1183–90). Among the tenencias that he appear to have held only for brief periods were Asturias de Santillana (1173), Liébana (1178), Monzón (1179), Cuenca de Campos (1181), Villaescusa (1183), Moratinos (1184), Toroño (1192–94), Asturias de Tineo (1193), Astudillo (1196), and Medina del Campo (1210). The large region of Asturias de Oviedo, once the heartland of the kingdom, was held by Fernando on three separate occasions (1191, 1192–93, 1200), and that of Bureba, a Castilian district fronting Navarre, twice (1187–90, 1202), his rule there being interrupted by Diego López II de Haro.

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