Un nobile di frontiera da malaga al Lario. Rodrigo de Arce y Beltrán, governatore di Como (1536-1563)

This essay considers the career of Rodrigo de Arce y Beltrán from Malaga, soldier and statesman in the service of Charles V and Philip II of Habsburg, focusing in particular on the decades spent by the Andalusian noble in the State of Milan, as castellan and governor of Como. Conferred of a high-responsibility command at the border of the Austrias' sphere of influence - in a theatre marked by strong tensions, including religious ones -, he can be counted among the architects of the consolidation of the Habsburg dominion over Lombardy: a high-ranking officer who knew how to take advantage of his own commission and of the enduring war emergency to shape a large patronage network among the subjects under his jurisdiction. Able to benefit and protect his friends and faithful and, at the same time, to energetically oppose enemies and competitors, he managed to adapt the horizons of his ambition - and consequently, the strategies adopted to promote it - to the global interests of an expanding monarchy.