Template:On this day - July 17

Bartolomé de las Casas

• 1242 – Orihuela (present-day Spain) is reconquered by the Castilian troops commanded by King Alfonso X the Wise.
• 1512 – Castilian troops commanded by Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo y Enríquez begin the conquest of Navarre (present-day Spain).
• 1566 – Death of Bartolomé de las Casas, Spanish encomendero, theologian, philosopher, Dominican friar, priest and bishop (b. 1484).
• 1770 – Birth of José Canga Argüelles, Spanish politician (d. 1843).
• 1821 – Spain cedes Pensacola (the last Spanish possession in Florida) to the United States, through the Adams–Onís Treaty.
• 1823 – In Peru, the supreme military commander Antonio José de Sucre hands over the presidency to José Bernardo de Tagle.
• 1843 – Birth of Julio Argentino Roca, Argentine soldier, president between 1880 and 1886 and between 1898 and 1904 (d. 1914).
• 1861 – In Mexico the Suspension of Payments Law of 1861 is promulgated.
• 1878 – Birth of José María Plans, Spanish physicist and mathematician (d. 1934).
• 1899 – The German biologist Christofredo Jakob arrives in Buenos Aires (Argentina), where he will create the Argentine-German Neurobiological School and train more than 4,000 researchers. Since 1982 the day has been commemorated in that country as Neuroscience Researcher Day.
• 1911 – Death of Rufino José Cuervo, Colombian philologist, humanist and scholar (b. 1844).
• 1928 – General Álvaro Obregón, Mexican counter-revolutionary, is assassinated while attending a lunch celebrating his reelection to the presidency of the republic.
• 1936 – In Spain a military uprising begins against the government of the Second Republic.
• 1968 – Death at the age of 101 of Sindo Garay, Cuban composer, guitarist and trovador (b. 1867).
• 1979 – In Nicaragua (in the course of the Sandinista Revolution), President Anastasio Somoza Debayle flees the country for Miami (United States).
• 1980 – In Bolivia, General Luis García Meza Tejada leads one of the bloodiest coups d'état in that country's history.
• 2002 – On Perejil Island, Spanish soldiers evict Moroccan soldiers who had occupied the island six days earlier.
• 2009 – Death of Ulalume González de León, Uruguayan-Mexican poet, translator, essayist and editor (b. 1932).
• 2021 – Death of Pilar Bardem, Spanish actress and activist (b. 1939).