Spanish sovereign (1556-1598) and King of Portugal and of the Algarves in Africa from this and beyond (1580-1598) born in the city austere and cold Spanish Valladolid, who believed himself appointed by God to preserve the Catholic religion among the subjects. Son of Emperor Carlos V and Isabel of Portugal, he was trained by his father in his political training and made him collaborate in government tasks. He traveled through Italy, Germany and the Netherlands (1548-1551) and with his father's abdication (1556), he inherited the throne of Spain and its colonial domains: Milanese, Sicily and Sardinia, Naples, Franco-Comté and the Countries Lows. At war with France, he won victories in the battles of Saint-Quentin (1557) and Gravelines (1558). He married four times, always for dynastic convenience, first to his cousin Maria of Portugal, who died prematurely in obscure circumstances.
He then married Mary I Tudor, whereby he acquired alleged rights to the crown of England (1554), however the project of personal union of the two countries failed with the death of Maria (1558), before she had a child your. The third of his wives was Isabel de Valois (1545-1568), daughter of Henry II of France, whom he married after the conclusion of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) which ended the sixty-year war with France, this marriage also being part of the process of pacification. The last wife was Anne of Austria, daughter of Maximilian II and mother of the future King Philip III.
He occupied the majestic El Escorial palace, which he had built in the Sierra de Guadarrama, and worked alone on issues of state, including the fight against Protestantism. In order to fulfill the mission that God "had given him", that of preserving the Catholic religion among his subjects, he did not hesitate to act with rigor and resort to discretionary powers, such as the court of the Inquisition which he had re-established in Flanders, under the control of the Duke of Alba. He fought and won a significant victory against the Turks in the Mediterranean at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) in which the writer Miguel de Cervantes took part.
In the Iberian Peninsula, he completed the work of unification started by Fernando and Isabel, after the death (1580) of Cardinal-King D. Henrique. After armed struggle with his cousin D. Antônio, annexed Portugal and overseas territories to his already vast possessions, as he descended from King Manuel I, through his mother, Princess Isabel of Portugal, daughter of King D. Manuel. A follower of Charles V's imperial policy, he was involved in many other external struggles that led him to erode and undermine Spain's financial and military resources, as in the case where religious and commercial interests led him to fight against England, from which Spain came out humiliated by the destruction of the Invincible Armada (1588).
He governed with strict personal control over the councils and secretariats and thus showed his lack of ability to distinguish the important from the trivial and the inability to decide quickly on issues important. An example of an absolutist monarch, his government was exercised on the basis of a strongly centralized administration, marked by a strict fiscalism, and he died in the El Escorial palace, one of the most important monuments in Spain erected during his government, near Madrid. On the religious plane, he turned to the Inquisition against Protestantism in its domains.
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order F - Biography - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/filipe-ii-espanha-e-i-portugal.htm
