Pedro was the illegitimate son of Fernán Eanes de Soutomaior; his mother has never been identified for certain. When Fernán died, his estates passed to his legitimate son, Alvaro. However, Alvaro died whilst still unmarried, and although the next legal heir was Alvaro's aunt, provision was made with her agreement to allow Pedro to inherit the estates instead. He was subsequently legitimized by the sovereigns of Castile and Portugal, and became Don Pedro Alvarez de Sotomayor. He married Teresa de Távora, who came from a noble Portuguese family. His children included Cristóbal de Sotomayor, who would sail with Diego Columbus to the West Indies. Cristóbal would become governor of Puerto Rico. Pedro's ancestral home was Soutomaior Castle, although he also resided for periods of his life in the courts of Castile and Portugal.
Nickname
Pedro Álvarez de Sotomayor acquired the epithet "Madruga" because he would "rise early" in the morning. According to legend he first gained the nickname as a result of a dispute with the Count of Ribadavia concerning the boundaries of their respective lands. To settle the dispute the two men agreed to rise at the first cockcrow, mount their horses, and ride toward each other's castle. Their meeting point would mark the new boundary. Instead of waiting until dawn Pedro Alvarez decided that first cockcrow was at midnight, and so rode through the night until he reached his rival's castle. When the Count emerged on hearing the dawn cockcrow, he found Don Pedro standing at his door, and exclaimed "Pedro Madruga!"
Career
Pedro Madruga was a figure in the court of Henry IV of Castile, and the king entrusted him with the role of keeping the powerful Bishop of Santiago, Alonso de Fonseca, under control. In the 1460s the second Irmandiño revolt erupted in Galicia when the peasantry rebelled against the regional nobility. Pedro Madruga had already sought refuge in Portugal. At the request of the nobles, he raised an army and confronted the irmandiños on several occasions until he finally managed to subdue them. During the War of the Castilian Succession in the 1470s he was a supporter of Joanna la Beltraneja against the claims of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand.
Reputation
Pedro Madruga's reputation is that of "a turbulent magnate who plowed a deep furrow in Galicia's troubled fifteenth century". Nevertheless, he was a popular figure in Galicia and was commemorated with the following lines:
Christopher Columbus?
In the late 19th century the Spanish writerGarcía de la Riega proposed the theory that Christopher Columbus had a Galician origin. Although briefly popular, the theory had fallen out of favour by the late 20th century. However, in recent years it has been proposed that Pedro Madruga and Christopher Columbus were the same person. According to this theory, Madruga did not die in 1486 but changed his identity to disguise a pact between his former enemies, the Catholic Monarchs, and himself. This thesis is based on several lines of evidence: such as Columbus named coastal features of the West Indies with the names of more than 100 localities of the Pontevedra estuary ; and the similarity of the handwriting of Columbus and Pedro Madruga. One argument against is a will drafted in 1491 by Alvaro de Sotomayor, eldest son of Pedro Madruga. In this document, Alvaro stipulates that "the bones of my parents ... be brought to be interred in the chapel of S. Obispo D. Juan in the Cathedral Church of Tuy," although this document implies that Pedro Madruga was dead in 1491 rather than 1486.
