In the 16th Century Valencia lost its hegemonic position that it used to have in the previous century. The discovery of America changed the axis of international policy. Valencia remained as the regional capital of a commerce, which mostly is not negotiated in its Lonja.

Valencia’s entry to the modern stage was characterized by a traumatic event: the revolt of the Germanías, a true civil war that confronted the Valencian society: from one side, the artisans and the farm workers and some members of the petit bourgeoisie and in the other side the nobility, the Moorish vassals and the well being bourgeoisie. After a first stage in 1519-1520 in which the Germanía took control of the city, the process radicalized. The troops influenced by the Germans admirers reached at first some military victories but in the end they were defeated and the movement was dismantled.

Since the end of the Fifteen Century, The Inquisition Court was operating in Valencia that acted in several occasions against the Jewish community. One of the families that suffered the harassment of the Inquisition was Lluís Vives, a great Valencian humanist and philosopher of the European Renaissance.

The humanist ideas and Renaissance aesthetic currents that prevail in Europe arrived to Valencia throughout these years, but they were cultivated only inside a restricted courtier circle linked with the viceroy court and did not reach to go deep in the society

Moreover, the religious protestant ideas counteracted the counter reformist ideology, nominated by characters of the nature of the patriarch Saint Juan de Ribera, promoter of the College of the Corpus Christi.

In the cultural field, the city lived a process of implantation of the Castile language, especially encouraged by the viceroy court of Germana de Foix. Important literary works were translated into Castilian such as the Courtier by Lluís Milà, or Valencia’s History by Antoni Beuter.