1. There is no detailed study of ‘absolutism’ in Spain, but the article on Castile by I. A. A. Thompson, ‘Absolutism in Castile’, reprinted in his essential volume Crown and Cortes. Government, Institutions and Representation in Early Modern Castile (Aldershot, 1993), sorts out confusions.
2. The most recent survey of the reign is by John Edwards, The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs 1474–1520 (Oxford, 2000).
3. A useful earlier study is that by J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516, 2 vols (Oxford, 1978), vol. 2.
4. The latest short biography of the queen is by Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, Isabel la Católica (Madrid, 2002).
5. See the important and fundamental study by Teofilo Ruiz on ‘Unsacred monarchy. The kings of Castile in the late Middle Ages’, reprinted in his The City and the Realm: Burgos and Castile 1080–1492 (Aldershot, 1992), chap. XIII.