Template:On this day - December 22

Ferdinand III of Castile

• 1248 – Ferdinand III enters the newly conquered Seville (present-day Spain).
• 1491 – In the newly conquered Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, the Catholic Monarchs sign the Capitulations of Alfacar.
• 1522 – In New Spain, Coatzacoalcos is founded, today a city and one of the most important ports in southern Mexico, located in the state of Veracruz.
• 1554 – Death of Francisco Dávila, Spanish conquistador and explorer (b. 1488).
• 1622 – In the Viceroyalty of Peru, Miguel Trujillo and Andrés Páez de Sotomayor found the city of Bucaramanga (present-day Colombia).
• 1815 – José María Morelos, priest, soldier and Mexican insurgent leader, is executed by firing squad (b. 1765).
• 1864 – During the second French intervention in Mexico (1862-1867), in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, the Mexican general Antonio Rosales (with 264 men) defeats an invading French force (700 men) in what is known as the Battle of San Pedro.
• 1871 – General Porfirio Díaz arrives in Tetela de Ocampo seeking military support from Los tres Juanes de la sierra Norte in the course of the "Rebellion of the Plan de La Noria".
• 1911 – Birth of Álvaro Cunqueiro, Spanish novelist, poet, playwright, journalist and gastronome (d. 1981).
• 1936 – In Cádiz (in the course of the Spanish Civil War), the first contingent of 3,000 "Blackshirts" (Italian fascist soldiers) lands to join the Spanish fascists.
• 1939 – In the city of Bogotá (Colombia), the Gold Museum opens, the largest collection of pre-Hispanic goldwork in the world.
• 1961 – In the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana, Fidel Castro declares Cuba the first «Territory Free of Illiteracy» in all of America.
• 1972 – The 16 survivors of flight 571, which crashed in the Andes mountains, are rescued; to survive they had to eat human flesh.
• 1992 – In Paraguay, the «Archives of Terror» of the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner and of the so-called Operation Condor are found, containing all the written communications between police and military authorities of Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay between 1970 and 1980.
• 1997 – The Acteal massacre takes place, during which 45 Tzotzil indigenous people were murdered while praying in a church in the community of Acteal, in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
• 1997 – The Congress of Deputies of Spain approves the country's full integration into the military structure of NATO.
• 2014 – In Nicaragua, the Government of President Daniel Ortega and the company HKND inaugurate the start of works on the Grand Canal of Nicaragua.