[conspire] Federales in Portland?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> BTW, I recall from a Great Courses class on Spain:  when Columbus died he was in such disgrace that the king refused to send a representative.  

Ferdinand and Isabella were irked by, metaphorically, the deployed
software failing to live up to the demo.

Which is to say, Columbus had pitched each of his four expensive voyages
to the Crown by appealing to Queen Isabella's religious fanaticism,
promising that vast amounts of the Far East (and then later, 'Er, I
guess it's not the Far East, but it's... somewhere?') would be won over
to the One True Church, saving the heathens, and all that.

Instead, Ferdinand and Isabella kept hearing what to them sounded like a
big-fish story, and then Columbus pulled embarrassing stunts like
entering into a near-civil-war with the colonists on Hispaniola, who
flooded into Spanish courts with compelling claims of Columbus's
mismanagement, broken promises, unpaid debts, and sundry atrocities --
not to mention (worst of all from fanatic Queen Isabella's perspective)
being not very interesting in roping the natives into Catholicism
because that might interfere with enslaving them and making money.
That was when the Crown stripped him of any further role in governance.

For the remained of his life, he kept agitating for a 10% share of all
the spoils from the New World, even though he'd been dismissed in
disgrace, and that didn't endear himself to the Crown, either.  Their
attitude was basically 'We told you to stop being an embarrassment and
go away.  Why don't you just go away?'  So, their not sending a
representative to the funeral (if that's what happened) is thereby
explained.