Black Legend

The Black Legend (in Spanish, leyenda negra) is the claim that Spain and the Spaniards were depicted as uniquely bloodthirsty, cruel, greedy and licentious, in excess of reality. This is contrasted with the White Legend ((in Spanish, leyenda rosa, which means pink legend), which promoted an ideal view of Spaniards.

History

Some of the most damning support for the legend comes directly from Spaniards themselves.

In 1552, the Dominican friar Bartolome de las Casas published his Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias), a polemical and arguably exaggerated account of the excesses which accompanied colonization, in which he blamed Spanish brutality for the near-extinction of the indigenous population of the island of Hispaniola. Really, while the massive population loss in the Americas after 1492 was mostly the consequence of Old World diseases {smallpox, influenza, measles and typhus} to which the colonial populations had no resistance, violence, exploitation and the destruction of traditional social and economic organisation took a severe toll and undermined native peoples' recuperative capacity.

The book was extensively used by the Dutch during their war for independence from Spain, and taken up by the English in their own wars with Spain (see Spanish Armada). The two northern nations were not only emerging as Spain's rivals for empire, but were also strongholds of Protestantism while Spain was the most powerful Catholic country of the period.

Other critics of Spain included the fallen secretary to king Philip II of Spain, Antonio Pérez, who fled to England where he published libels against the Spanish Monarchy. The imprisonment and subsequent death of Don Carlos by his parent Philip II of Spain added to the legend. This event inspired an opera. Also, the Spanish-born pope Alexander VI became almost a mythical character, and countless legends and traditions attached to his name.

The United States of America would have inherited the Black Legend from the British colonization of the Americas. Some people feel that the United States mass media and government have propagated it to justify United States actions against Spain or Latin American countries, as in the Spanish-American War or in the colonization of Philippines after the Philippine-American War. We can still see evidence of the Black legend in modern literature and movies, as in Steven Spielberg's Amistad.

Topics of the Black Legend

• Bullfighting
• Lucrezia Borgia
• Philip II of Spain
• Slavery
• Spanish colonization of the Americas.
• Spanish culture
• Spanish Inquisition
• Spanish military campaigns in Europe