ARAGON IN ITALY AND SPAIN, 1458-94tradition, at north Mrica and the supply lines bringing grain
from Sicily, though such plans were delayed by the great pro-
ject in which he joined his wife, Isabella of Castile: the extinc-
tion of the last Muslim state in Spain, Nasrid Granada. Mter
1492, however, he could look eastwards out of Aragon, and,
as events were to prove, westwards out of Castile towards the
New World. And yet in many respects it was the Mediterra-
nean rather than the Americas that had to be the main focus
of his policies; his own claim to authority in Castile would
lapse were Isabella to predecease him, as she did. His difficult-
ies were compounded by the succession problem that faced
the Catholic Monarchs, and which seemed to make it likely
that the personal union of Castile and Aragon would not
persist. In the last analysis, Ferdinand was indeed an Ara-
gonese and not simply a Spanish monarch, looking towards
the Mediterranean kingdoms that lay under the rule of the
kings of Aragon. (Sicily was, in fact the first territory over
which the young Ferdinand had become king.) As will be
seen in the next chapter, it was Naples that finally became
the focus of his ambitions.