“You are to be the head for this body, whose limbs are the city dwellers whom you govern. Study diligently that which the head must know,” was the advice offered governors and judges by Pietro Martire d'Anghera, an Italian humanist resident at Ferdinand and Isabella's court. “You have been sent to these city dwellers not as their lord, but as their faithful servant.”

The promptings were well received during the second decade of Isabella's reign which, by contrast with the strife-ridden imposition of her rule, was virtually a golden age of corregidor accord with the urban oligarchy. The record is suddenly replete with complimentary remarks concerning the royal official. During the session of Madrid's council on 28 February 1485 a laudatory petition was drawn up requesting that García de la Quadra be granted another term. When, by April, there was no response from court, an even more fulsome letter was dispatched, pleading that it be “allowed to keep this good man who was always just and kept the peace.” Palencia was also well pleased, having originally requested the official as a way to escape onerous domination by the lord-bishop. The town continued to insist, during 1486 and 1488, upon its “right” to have a corregidor. The admiration it lavished upon its official is epitomized by a council session during January 1489, when the full body authorized sending two delegates to court to obtain an extension for Francisco de Vargas because of the many services he performed for the city.