GARCA II

born 1042? died March 22, 1090, Luna Castle king of Galicia from 1065 to 1071. His father, Ferdinand I the Great, divided his lands among his three sons: Alfonso VI received Leon; Sancho II received Castile; and Garca II, the youngest, received Galicia with a portion of Portugal (1065). Despotic and suspicious, Garca was deprived of his kingdom by his brother Sancho II and sent into exile to the Moorish court at Seville. When Sancho II was assassinated during a fratricidal struggle with Alfonso VI and their sister Urraca, Garca returned from Seville. Alfonso VI, then in control, had him arrested and imprisoned in the castle at Luna (1073), never to be released. Garca became a figure of Castilian poetry and romance, popular in the European Middle Ages.