Lady of La Gomera · c. 1460s–c. 1504
Lady of La Gomera
Lady of La Gomera and El Hierro, she governed after Hernán Peraza's death and was linked to Columbus's stopovers in La Gomera. The tradition of a romance with Columbus should not be confused with documented facts.
Beatriz de Bobadilla y Ulloa was a Castilian aristocrat who acquired a central role in island lordship through her marriages to Hernán Peraza the Younger and later to Alonso Fernández de Lugo. After Peraza's death during the Gomeran rebellion of 1488, she acted as effective authority in La Gomera and defended the interests of the seigneurial house in a context of violence, litigation and colonial reorganisation.
The repression that followed the rebellion, including executions and the sale of Gomerans, is documented and has been studied by Wölfel and modern historiography. That episode should be framed as part of seigneurial politics and disputes before the Crown, not only as a personal character trait.
Christopher Columbus stopped and provisioned in La Gomera during his Atlantic voyages, linking the island and its lady to Columbian memory. Later tradition turned that logistical relationship into a love story, but the historical profile must distinguish documentation, historiographical tradition and legend.
