Alfonso XI struck the cornado as part of a broader effort to stabilize a billon coinage that had been repeatedly debased by his predecessors. His reign saw the dramatic victory at Río Salado in 1340 — the last major Marinid invasion of Iberia — funded in part by emergency monetary levies that kept mints like Cuenca operating under fiscal pressure throughout the period. Alfonso XI died at Gibraltar in 1350, one of the few medieval Iberian monarchs killed by plague rather than war, leaving the cornado series to be continued under Pedro I.
Alfonso XI struck the cornado as part of a broader effort to stabilize a billon coinage that had been repeatedly debased by his predecessors. His reign saw the dramatic victory at Río Salado in 1340 — the last major Marinid invasion of Iberia — funded in part by emergency monetary levies that kept mints like Cuenca operating under fiscal pressure throughout the period. Alfonso XI died at Gibraltar in 1350, one of the few medieval Iberian monarchs killed by plague rather than war, leaving the cornado series to be continued under Pedro I.