Constructing Noble Memory Across the Atlantic: Genealogy and Legitimacy in the Villafañe Lineage (16th–17th Centuries)

Abstract

This study examines the role of genealogy in the construction of noble identity and social legitimacy through the case of the Villafañe lineage between the Kingdom of León and Spanish America during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Drawing upon archival documentation, genealogical records, heraldic sources, and colonial evidence from León (Spain), La Rioja, Tucumán, and Córdoba (present-day Argentina), the article combines historical genealogy, social history, and Atlantic studies to reconstruct the trajectory of the lineage and its transregional networks. The findings indicate that the continuity of the Villafañe family was sustained through the interaction of documented descent, kinship alliances, municipal participation, Atlantic mobility, and the preservation of genealogical narratives that reinforced lineage identity and noble status across geographically distant settings. Migration to Spanish America did not represent a rupture with Leonese origins; rather, it facilitated the adaptation and projection of pre-existing forms of social organization and collective identity within colonial environments. The study argues that genealogy functioned simultaneously as a documentary practice and as a mechanism through which noble memory, social distinction, and historical continuity were articulated and reproduced. More broadly, the Villafañe case illustrates how family networks connected local Iberian societies with colonial elite environments, contributing to the formation and persistence of noble identities across the Atlantic world.