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In contrast to the traditional interpretation that reduces Spanish-French rivalry to a succession of military confrontations that originated during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, this paper offers a more complex reading of the phenomena of emulation/competition and admiration/seduction between the two monarchies during the first phase of the Italian Wars. Thanks to a re-reading of diplomatic sources and propagandistic production, it shows to what extent the yearnings for religious reform, defence against Ottoman expansion or the recovery of the Christian East conditioned the perceptions and justifications of both powers, which needed the Apostolic See to legitimise their Mediterranean aspirations and their leadership in Christendom. However, there are differences in the means employed and in the degree of synergy with the papacy between the Valois and the last Trastamara monarchies that explain the ascendence of the latter in the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]