Black and White Legends of the Spanish Inquisition

The Black Legend, or the Spanish Black Legend (Spanish: La leyenda negra), is an alleged historiographical tendency consisting of anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda. Its proponents consider it to have its roots in the 16th century, originally as a political and psychological weapon by Spain's northern European rivals in the attempt of demonizing the Spanish Empire, its people and culture, minimizing Spanish discoveries and achievements, and countering its influence and power in world affairs.

The assimilation of primarily English and Dutch propaganda into mainstream history is theorised to have created an anti-Hispanic bias in subsequent historians and a distorted view of the history of Spain, Latin America, and other parts of the world.[1] This allowed for other countries to gain Native American support due to the propaganda against the Spanish on their treatment of natives and those that do not follow Catholic beliefs.[2]

Although the existence of a 16th- and 17th-century Spanish black legend has general historical consensus, aspects of the legend are still debated.[3] Charles Gibson described it as "The accumulated tradition of propaganda and Hispanophobia according to which the Spanish Empire is regarded as cruel, bigoted, degenerate, exploitative and self-righteous in excess of reality".[1] Like other black legends, the Spanish black legend combined fabrications, de-contextualization, exaggeration, cherry picking and double standards with facts.

Image makers typically pictured Spain as a pirate or demon, surrounded by symbols of gothic horror such as skeletons, bloody knives, and skulls.[4]

ORIGINS

Anti-Spanish sentiment appeared in many parts of Europe as the Spanish Empire grew. In the Habsburg realm, Spain was a dominant power in a union encompassing present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Burgundy and much of Italy. Iberian (principally Castilian) troops marched along the Spanish Road from Italy to Germany to fight on Dutch and German battlefields.[9](p442)

During the Eighty Years' War, propaganda depicted Spaniards as bloodthirsty barbarians. During the following centuries, anti-Spanish stereotypes circulated widely (especially in English-, Dutch- and German-speaking parts of Europe).[citation needed] The propaganda depicted exaggerated versions of the evils of Spanish colonial practices and the Spanish Inquisition.

William S. Maltby, regarding Spain in the Netherlands:

As part of an Elizabethan campaign against Spain and the Catholic Church ...Literally hundreds of anti-Spanish publications appeared in English, Dutch, French, and German in the sixteenth century. New editions, and new works restating old accusations, would appear in the Thirty Years War and in other occasions when it seemed useful to excite anti-Spanish sentiment. Given the pervasiveness of such material, it is not surprising that the authors of scholarly histories absorbed anti-hispanism and transmitted it to later generations.

— William S. Maltby, The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire

WHITE LEGEND
The label "White Legend" is used by some historians[by whom?] to describe a historiographic approach which they believe goes too far in trying to counter the Black Legend, and which consequently ends up painting an uncritical or idealized image of Spanish colonial practices.[70] Such an approach has been described as characteristic of Nationalist Spanish historiography during the regime of Francisco Franco, which associated itself with the imperial past couched in positive terms.[71] Some, such as Benjamin Keen, have criticized the works of John Fiske and Lewis Hanke as going too far towards idealizing Spanish history.[72]

The "White Legend" may also refer to the propaganda spread within Spain by Philip II and his descendants,[citation needed] to present his actions to preserve his own patrimony in the Netherlands and America as religiously motivated. This propaganda would create the view of a prudent and pious monarch within Spain, helping to control the unrest that his aggressive policies and wars in the Netherlands were generating.

THE

INCREDIBLE

STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

THE BLACK AND WHITE LEGENDS
OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION

THE SPANISH INQUISITION:
SPAIN'S "BLACK LEGEND"
Alec Ryrie,
Gresham Professor of Divinity 2019 (56.04)
Spain became a byword for cruelty in much of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whether it was the brutality of American colonisation, the tyranny of the Spanish Inquisition or the horrors of the Eighty Years’ War in the Netherlands. This lecture will survey this ‘black legend’ and ask what made it so enduring – and why some parts of the story, such as the Inquisition’s genocidal campaign against Spanish Jews, received so
much less attention than others.