AHC: No anti-Spanish Black Legend

How do we prevent the situation wherein Spain is represented as the memetic villain of Europe, particularly among Anglophone communities?
 
How do we prevent the situation wherein Spain is represented as the memetic villain of Europe, particularly among Anglophone communities?

Well, you'd have to start with doing something about the Inquisition. Spain became the "boogeyman" not because she was the most powerful country in Europe in the 16th century, but because she was the most powerful country in Europe AND was fanatically pushing the agenda of the Roman Catholic Church, including savage persecutions of Protestant "heretics' wherever her power held sway. And she continued doing this for quite a long time.

Find a way to steer Spain away from these activities, and she may be looked on as a threat, but she won't become an international villain figure which lasts for centuries afterward.
 
Maybe have Spain get its inquisition when the other powers were doing it? That way they dont get mocked for being to lenient and then seen as backwards?
 
Spain became the "boogeyman" not because she was the most powerful country in Europe in the 16th century, but because she was the most powerful country in Europe AND was fanatically pushing the agenda of the Roman Catholic Church, including savage persecutions of Protestant "heretics' wherever her power held sway. And she continued doing this for quite a long time.


This is the key, IMHO.

Making Spain poorer or less of a European hegemon doesn't tackle the all too real religious issues which really cemented their "boogeyman" status in the Anglosphere.

I'm not saying that the Protestants didn't give as good as they took when it came to violence sparked by religious hatred, but having Spain busy fighting a extremely nasty religious war for over eighty years in the Low Countries right across the Channel had lasting effects.
 
A big part of the slithers of truth behind the black legend can be traced right back to Columbus himself -- who essentially bumbled his way into defining the most negative facets of Spain's approach to the New World (mass enslavement of the inhabitants, autocracy, etc)...
 
Have Spain stay under the Trastamaras. Then you can have Castile and Aragon stay in splendid isolation from the affairs of the HRE and England for a while longer since they'll be busy with their colonial empire and the Ottomans.
 
Have Spain stay under the Trastamaras. Then you can have Castile and Aragon stay in splendid isolation from the affairs of the HRE and England for a while longer since they'll be busy with their colonial empire and the Ottomans.

Oh, are you predicting exactly what I'm doing for my TL? :D;) That would also have to prevent the weakening of the Spanish economy as they don't have to deal with constant wars.
 
Oh, are you predicting exactly what I'm doing for my TL? :D;) That would also have to prevent the weakening of the Spanish economy as they don't have to deal with constant wars.
I assume Spain still forms though. So Ferdinand would still fight in Italy wouldn't he?
 
Oh, are you predicting exactly what I'm doing for my TL? :D;) That would also have to prevent the weakening of the Spanish economy as they don't have to deal with constant wars.
No, but I'm reading a book on imperial Spain and I'm on the section where it talks about Charles V and the inefficiencies that come with managing the entire Habsburg empire. :D I was more thinking Ferdinand and Isabella's son Juan who died in 1497 rather than Miguel da Paz though.
 

Goldstein

Banned
Maybe have Spain get its inquisition when the other powers were doing it? That way they dont get mocked for being to lenient and then seen as backwards?

You mean like Portugal, who got rid of it in 1821? Is there a Portuguese Black Legend I haven't heard about?

No, wilcoxchar is looking in the right direction. Mind that the Black Legend started not that much as anti-Spanish as anti-Hapsburg.
 
You mean like Portugal, who got rid of it in 1821? Is there a Portuguese Black Legend I haven't heard about?

No, wilcoxchar is looking in the right direction. Mind that the Black Legend started not that much as anti-Spanish as anti-Hapsburg.

Being the most powerful dynasty in the world didn't really help their reputation, innit?
 
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