The settlement of Madeira and the exploitation of the Guinea coast brought vast profits, but his obsession with the Castilian dominated Canary Islands and his interventions in Morocco were ruinous.

ECONOMIST: Historical biography

The whistled language of La Gomera Island in the Canaries, the Silbo Gomero, replicates the islanders' habitual language (Castilian Spanish) with whistling.

UNESCO: Culture

Translations are necessarily rewrites of the original, and Mr Cela's exquisite Castilian Spanish may not travel easily.

ECONOMIST: Camilo Jos�� Cela

Estelle Irizarry, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University, has analyzed the language and syntax of hundreds of handwritten letters, diaries and documents of Columbus and concluded that the explorer's primary written and spoken language was Castilian Spanish.

CNN: Was Columbus secretly a Jew?

Philip V abolished Barcelona's Cortes and imposed Castilian law on all parts of Aragon's crown, including the Catalans.

BBC: Eurozone crisis: Catalonia's place in Spain

He learned Portuguese, Latin and Spain's official language, Castilian, so that he could read geography books and try and map the world.

BBC: News | World | Columbus tops millennium poll

The decor in the hotel's rooms captures different eras of Spain's past with Andalusian, Castilian and Moorish elements.

CNN: 9 glamorous movie-star hotels