García Fernández de Villamayor

García Fernández de Villamayor (c. 1170 – c. 1241) was a Castilian nobleman.

His career unfolded primarily at court, where he served as Mayordomo mayor (royal high steward) to Queen Eleanor, Queen Berengaria, and King Ferdinand III. Along with his wife Mayor Arias, he was in charge of the education of Infante Alfonso, the first-born son of King Ferdinand who went on to become King Alfonso X.

García Fernández, founder of the House of Villamayor, was probably born in the 1170s near Villaldemiro. His name first appears on a document of 1194 in which the grandchildren of Ordoño Pérez and Urraca Fernández granted to the Bishop of Burgos properties their grandparents held in the town of Las Hormazas.

Although history knows him as García (or Garcí) Fernández de Villamayor, in the sources he is identified as "de Villaldemiro". Villamayor and Villaldemiro are towns located about 20 km south of Burgos, and it is in this area, around the basins of the rivers Arlanzón and Arlanza, that his holdings were clustered.

There is no direct documentary evidence to confirm the family origins of García Fernández. It has been proposed that he was a grandson of the García Ordóñez de Villamayor who appears in the 1170 treaty between Alfonso VIII of Castile and Alfonso II of Aragon, which would make his family a secondary branch of the House of Aza, although according to the most reliable studies, he was a descendant of Martín Díaz, member of a noble family of Tierra de Campos. His father was likely the same Fernando García who appears as a signatory to royal privileges during the reign of Alfonso VIII and who took part in 1212 in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, although again there is no explicit confirmation in the documentary record. Moreover, his maternal ancestry is completely unknown.

...
Wikipedia