History of Spain

Defeats such as that of the Armada in 1588 were considered God's fair punishment for the sins of Spanish society. Therefore this society must purify itself - without stopping its expansion abroad - so that "the nations of this Europe of ours may once again flourish in Christianity." To the deep sense of mission there was now added a burning desire to re-establish religious unity in Europe.

But for one long century before that, from the beginning of the internal restoration undertaken by Fernando and Isabel until the larval stage of the defeatist generation of 1588, Spain had shown a dynamic drive seldom paralleled in history. The Spaniard felt his hour had arrived. He received vast influences from Renaissance currents, both from Italy and the Low Countries. But the fact that he rode on horseback through the lands of the New World was to place him ahead even of Renaissance ideas and to fill him with a proud spirit of progress. New wonders - never even imagined by the ancient Greeks and Romans - came daily before his eyes, and he was impelled to incorporate them into his way of life. For this the teachings of the ancients were of little use. In the words of a Spaniard of the time, the physical features and the customs observed in the new lands "showed how wrong these ancients were in their writings about these areasÉ".

The enormous task of incorporating the New World into Western civilization was carried out by the Spaniards in an incredibly short time. This can only be explained in terms of their eventful medieval past. To the experience gained in the struggle against the Moslems they soon added the discovery of the Canary Islands. This was a small-scale prelude for the venture into the New World, involving overseas action, clashing with primitive cultures, preaching of the Gospel and creation of the new Castillas. Eventually, not only was the New World brought into the fold of Western civilization, but European life was radically changed as a result. Europe entered into a dynamic period of conquest and assimilation for which Spain had shown the way.

Yet the Spain of the 16th century, though still preserving its great ideals, evolved slowly. The hidalgos who fought under Charles V in Europe and under Cortés in America were men of action, fond of reading books on chivalry. Under Felipe II they were replaced by a new breed more inclined to discourse than to action. While it is true that the most valuable works of the Spanish baroque, both in literature and in the arts, were crafted after the ArmadaŐs defeat, this did not prevent Spanish society from being afflicted by a dangerous dichotomy.

It was then that the underlying internal unity became apparent. This could be attributed largely to a deficiency of adequate organs to bring about the political union of the two former kingdoms of Castilla and Aragón. The difficulties were compounded because the Catholic Monarchy, in addition of the biological creation of an overseas Spanish empire, went on to build a supranational state with vast ramifications in Central Europe.

Indeed, at the beginning of the 16th century, the Catholic Sovereigns succeeded in making a modern state out of Castilla by controlling the nobility, insuring the loyalty of the Cortes and establishing new institutions or reviving some old ones. But they failed to persuade the crown of Aragón to integrate its different customs and traditions with those of Castilla. Only in the field of religion were they able to spread a mantle that covered all of the Spanish speaking people. It is difficult to explain why Aragón, which had displayed tremendous energies in the early Middle Ages, now flinched from the enterprises undertaken by the Catholic Sovereigns. Had its will be weakened by the establishment of the Castilian dynasty of the Trastamaras? Was it because of the civil wars and social upheavals of the 15th century? At any rate, the disproportionate forces - both in territory and in population - between Castilla and Aragón at the time of the marriage of Isabel to Fernando resulted in a fierce Castilian arrogance and in a cold indifference, born of deep resentment, on the part of the Aragonese, Catalans and Valencians.

The only thing achieved by the marriage was to extend the outer covering of Spanish unity without really having formed an inner structure. There followed a rapid territorial expansion, which brought the supranational Monarchy into being. From the very beginning, Castilla played the leading role in it. After expanding its eastern border to the Mediterranean, it found it convenient to embrace the policies of the dynastic Habsburgs and Bourbons, who in turn often proclaimed their preferences for Castilla. But these preferences had a serious and unavoidable result: they inhibited the subjects of the crown of Aragón even in the things at which they were most competent - sailing and commercial enterprises. For hundreds of years these subjects were not allowed to sail to or to trade with the New World. All traffic moved through specific ports in southern Spain. Into this vacuum stepped the sailors and merchants of Genoa and Antwerp.