Portuguese king born in Sintra, nicknamed Afonso the African for his expansionist campaigns in North Africa. Son of D. Duarte and Queen Leonor, daughter of Fernando I of Aragon. With the death of his father, at the age of six he assumed the throne under the regency of his mother (1438-1440) and his uncle D. Pedro, Duke of Coimbra (1440-1448), whose daughter Isabel married.
Disdaining the project of the mercantile bourgeoisie engaged in the great navigations, he allied himself with the rural aristocracy and gave priority to Portuguese expansion in Morocco. Thus, he intervened in North Africa, taking Alcácer Ceguer (1458), as well as Arzila and Tangier (1471) and that is why he was nicknamed Afonso the African and called himself king of Portugal from here and beyond in Africa.
After Leonor's death, he married Joan to Beltraneja, daughter of Henry IV of Castile, and began to support her in the dispute for the throne of Castile against her uncles Isabel and Fernando, the Catholic kings, who then fought for the centralization of Spanish power and supported the maritime discoveries, even attacking Castile (1475) but was defeated in Toro (1476), he abdicated the throne in favor of his son John, João II, and died in Sintra that same year, before the Portuguese courts could ratify his abdication..
Source: Biographies - Academic Unit of Civil Engineering / UFCG
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SCHOOL, Team Brazil. "Alfonso V of Portugal"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/afonso-v-portugal.htm. Accessed on June 29, 2021.
