Juan Ramon Folch de Cardona, 3rd count of Cardona
The 6th Count of Prades and the 4th Count of Cardona, Joan Ramon III Folc de Cardona i de Prades (9 January 1418 – 1485), was a Catalan nobleman in the late Middle Ages, Admiral of Aragon and Captain-General of Catalonia as well as 1477-79 Viceroy of Sicily. His titles included Count of Prades, Count of Cardona and Viscount of Vilamur and Baron of Entenza. Comte de Prades, comte de Cardona, baro de Entenza i vescomte de Vilamur. Juan Ramón Folch de Cardona y Ximenez de Arenós'.
His parents were Joan Ramon II, 3rd Count of Cardona Joan Ramon Folc II de Cardona (14 June 1400 – 1471), and his wife Joana de Prades, heiress of Prades and Entenza.
He became the sixth count of Prades and viscount of Vilamur upon the 1445 resignation of his parents to his favor.
He actively participated in the cortes parliaments from 1449 to 1455.
He was in the service, in Italy, of king Alfonso V, ruler of Catalonia-Aragon, and he was his ambassador to the pope.
At the beginning of the 1461 revolution, Joan Ramon IV was a member of the Council of the Catalan Principality. The count negotiated the proclamation of Prince Ferran as king Juan's "firstborn", but his rivalry with the Count of Pallars, his own nephew, and his inclination towards don Juan the Unreliable separated him from the Catalan movement.
Shortly before beginning of the civil war, he joined in May 1462 the party of don Juan. He was Captain-General of the armies of Juan II, and in that way he was the greatest military figure in the civil war. His name is linked with all the great actions favorable to don Juan II: Rubinat, Calaf, Cervera, Berga, Sabadell, Sant Cugat, Martorell and the campaign of Emporda in 1472.
Juan II, battling against his own rebelling Catalan subjects, experienced extreme difficulties in 1467, but in 1468, the younger son of later king (since 1479) John II of Aragon, 16-year-old Ferdinand II of Aragon, received the military help of his father, the 3rd Count of Cardona, who died in 1471. When his father, the 3rd Count of Cardona, died in 1471, he inherited the title of Admiral of Aragon.
In 1467 the count had his heir, Joan Ramon IV, the future first duke of the house, to marry with Aldonza Enríquez, younger half-sister of Queen Joana and therefore an aunt to Ferdinand II. Aldonza Enriquez was sister of Juana Enriquez, herself the mother of king Ferdinand II of Aragon, and both sisters came from the House of Enríquez, hereditary Admirals of Castile since about 1404.
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