Template:On this day - December 26

Alfonso the Wise

• 1246 – In present-day Spain, King Alfonso X of Castile marries Violant of Aragon in the Collegiate Church of Valladolid.
• 1489 – In present-day Spain, the Catholic Monarchs reconquer Almería, a city that had been taken by Al-Zagal and his Moorish troops.
• 1552 – In present-day France, the troops of the Emperor Charles I of Spain lift the Siege of Metz after 60 days of futile efforts to breach the walls, during which 40,000 soldiers perished, mainly Spaniards, Italians and Germans.
• 1568 – In Seville (Spain), the letter from Pedro de Osma y de Xaray Zejo to Nicolás Monardes is written, included in the third edition of the "Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales".
• 1713 – In Spain, Philip V signs a Royal Decree, drafted by Jean Orry, by which the country is divided into 21 provinces for administrative and tax purposes.
• 1727 – Death of Baltasar de Zúñiga, Marquis of Valero, Viceroy of New Spain (b. 1658).
• 1747 – Birth of Esteban de Arteaga, Spanish Jesuit musicologist and writer (d. 1799).
• 1792 – José Ocáriz, Spanish consul in Paris, officially protests in a letter against the condition of prisoner to which Louis XVI is subjected.
• 1815 – Casimiro Marcó del Pont replaces Mariano Osorio in the Captaincy General of Chile. He was the last Spanish governor of the Captaincy.
• 1818 – Death of Isabel of Portugal, Spanish Queen Consort, second wife of Ferdinand VII (b. 1797).
• 1884 – Spain announces to the foreign powers that it holds under its «protectorate» the western coast of Africa between Capes Bojador and Blanco, a territory commonly called Western Sahara.
• 1912 – In the Amazonia of Peru, the Madre de Dios Department is created from territories of Puno and Cusco.
• 1921 – Death of Miguel Ramón Demetrio Faílde y Pérez, Cuban musician and composer (b. 1852).
• 1960 – Operation Peter Pan begins, during which more than 14,000 minors left Cuba alone bound for the United States, in what was considered the largest child exodus of the 20th century in the West.
• 1999 – Alfonso Portillo and the Guatemalan Republican Front, founded by the coup-leading general Efraín Ríos Montt, proclaim themselves winners of the second round of the presidential elections in Guatemala.
• 2010 – Death of Salvador Jorge Blanco, politician, lawyer and Dominican president between 1982 and 1986 (b. 1926).
• 2020 – Death of Gregorio Salvador, Spanish philologist, dialectologist, lexicographer and literary critic.