A Short History of Spain- Part 6: 1492

A New World Emerges

Ferdinand and Isabella, The Catholic Kings

Six miles from the iconic fortress city of Granada in Spain sits a village very few have heard of. The small village of Santa Fe refers to itself as the “cradle of Hispanicity”. It was here in January of 1492 that Isabella literally pawned her personal jewelry to fund the greatest voyage of discovery in the history of the world. The village was originally constructed by her husband, King Ferdinand as a logistical support center for the ongoing siege of Granada, the last Moorish hold-out of the 700-year Islamic presence on the Iberian Peninsula. 

In this year, this monumental year of 1492, many features of the Spain we know today began to take shape. In some ways, it shut doors to the past that would never be re-opened. In other ways, it merely re-cycled the threads of its history and disguised them as fresh rope along which the emerging nation could pull itself forward. In this post, I will present three interrelated events of 1492 that serve as milestones in Spain’s historical journey. 

Event 1: Columbus and Political Momentum

A posthumous portrait of Columbus

Prior to 1492 Columbus had been futilely soliciting monies from the Iberian monarchies for over seven years. Now suddenly, with the royal coffers exhausted from the final efforts of the Reconquest and the chronic civil wars among the Castilian and Aragonese nobility, Isabella finally decides to pawn her personal jewelry (literally) and fund this spurious notion of going east by sailing west. Although the timing of this investment may seem to defy logic, it was in some ways designed as a shot of political and spiritual adrenalin intended to maintain the unifying momentum of the Reconquest. The truth is that the nascent Castilian-Arogonese Kingdom, around which modern Spain would develop, was far from stable and its success far from inevitable. Survival would depend on deliberate political strategy. King Ferdinand particularly was so adept at political maneuvering that he is a subject of universal praise in Machiaveli’s The Prince. The push for Granada had provided a much-needed political focal point, capitalizing on antagonism towards “the other” and a respite from domestic concerns in their native courts. We are not unfamiliar with this strategy even today, as nation states seek to soothe their citizens’ day-to-day anxieties with distracting pursuits such as foreign conflict or demonization of domestic rivals. This focus on the world beyond Spain’s borders, a continuation of this political and spiritual conquest, would take many forms, including the colonization of the Americas, the Ottoman wars, the Wars of Religion with European rivals, and the global expansion of a Spanish Empire. These pursuits were in some sense designed as a pressure relief valve for Spain’s day-to-day domestic political fragility, a fragility that remains visible even today.   

Note: It’s interesting to consider that Columbus’s journey was actually the product of Spain’s role as a cultural crossroads. Jewish bankers financed an evangelical Christian adventure, made possible by the fruit of Islamic science. (The modern astrolabe is but one example.)

Event 2: The Exile of the Jews and the Turn Inward

The personal confessor to the Royal Family and architect of Jewish persecution, Tomas de Torquemada

To be fair, Ferdinand and Isabella did not invent antisemitism. In fact, they inherited a long Iberian tradition. Although Iberia had a significant Jewish population since the 5th Century, life had never been easy for them. There was certainly an intellectual détente (and collaboration) with the Umayyad Caliphate, and relative tolerance in post-Umayyad kingdoms. However, the Jews were always a minority. They were blamed by many for the Black Plague, and were generally scorned for their role as bankers, a role that inherently required them to commit the Christian sin of usury. They typically placed a high value on education, often in professional success and high social status, allowing some Jews to accumulate notable wealth. This wealth often made them attractive to non-Jewish Christian nobility and marriages of convenience became common. Ferdinand and Isabella found the perfect foil in the Jews. First of all, by formally demonizing them they were able to demonize the same (now intermarried) lesser Spanish nobility that was constantly threatening the power of the unified but struggling Aragonese-Castilian Kingdom. Secondly, by exiling the same bankers who had been lending them money for years, they essentially eradicated much of their own debt obligations. Finally, exiling the Jews meant exiling the value of education. The non-Jewish middle and lower classes never trusted the educated class and had always felt subjugated by them. Now the working classes would enjoy the pure-blooded Catholic leadership that they thought they deserved. If all of this sounds familiar, it should be. This same process has played out over and over again during the past 500 years as new regimes seek to gain control via the demonization of “the other” (where “the other” may be defined by race, wealth, or religion). In Spain’s case, the economic and cultural damage continued for centuries, crippling Spain’s ability to participate in The Enlightenment and even Industrial Revolution. Despite Spain’s global empire, the cultural “inwardness” that began in 1492, would not fully begin to rectify itself until Franco’s death in 1975.

NOTE: Of course, the glue that held this cultural involution together was the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition (Spain’s in particular) is so interesting and influential that I will dedicate a separate post to the subject. 

Event 3: A Weapon More Powerful than The Sword

Castilian Grammaticist Antonio de Nebrija

Event 1 provided emerging Spain with political and spiritual momentum. Event number 2 offered the promise of domestic power. This third event provided a vehicle for Empire. Even before the Roman Empire began its decline, Latin had begun a long process of diffusion creating a number of “vulgar” dialects. Today we refer to some of the products of this diffusion as the Romance languages. However, until 1492, none of these languages had any formal identity. There were always varying accents. Words would come into and out of favor. The educated might exercise more sophisticated grammatical structures. But beyond this, there was no right or wrong. Vulgar Latin did not hold power. Nor was it exclusive. When Antonio de Nebrija presented his book Castilian Grammar to Queen Isabella, she was at first unconvinced.  Cardinal Cisneros himself came to Nebrija’s defense, explaining to the queen that “with conquest comes the need for the conquered to accept the laws and the language of the conquerors”. Now she understood. Language was both a means and a test of subjugation. Even today, Spanish remains one of the only languages in the world with a definitive right and wrong, and with a governing body (The Royal Academy) that rules upon language usage. Spain’s wielding of Castilian (known to us today as Spanish) played a key role in the expansion of its Empire, but an even larger role in the eventual subjugation of Spanish Iberia. In 1492, Spain was far from united, even though the unification of Aragon and Castile under a single crown was a major step. Until 1975, Castilian was the only legal language in Spain. Franco understood the critical importance of linguistic dominance and prohibited the use of both Basque and Catalan in public. None of this linguistic authoritarianism would have been possible without the seeds planted in 1492.  

Note: The language wars continue to rage in Spain, with Catalonia refusing to meet the minimum standards for Castilian language instruction in public schools. We’ll come back to this in the final installment of this series. 

Conclusion

Although my interpretation of the above events may seem cynical, or even critical, they are not meant be definitive. Events and inventions have consequences, and we tend to judge them exclusively in light of the consequences which we select. We can do so because we have the luxury of time. The purpose of this series of posts on Spanish History is to give us a better appreciation of Spain today. Regardless of how the above events are interpreted, the power of their effect is beyond debate.