As every October 12, Spain's National Day, or Hispanic Day, debates arise, especially among decolonial groups, about the appropriateness of Spain's National Day being October 12, a day that celebrates the arrival of Christopher Columbus to American lands, after he departed on August 3, 1492, from the Port of Palos, with a crew of 92 sailors aboard the nao Santa María and the caravels La Niña and La Pinta.
Thus, speaking of the Spanish presence in America continues to be, five centuries later, a matter capable of stirring passions. For some, the arrival of the Spanish in the New World constitutes little less than the beginning of an enterprise of exploitation and systematic destruction of indigenous peoples. For others, on the contrary, the conquest was a civilizing feat without shadows that should be contemplated solely from an epic perspective.
History, however, rarely admits such simplifications.
The so-called Spanish Black Legend was born and developed from accounts that presented Spain as a particularly cruel, fanatical, and exterminating power. These representations had an enormous diffusion in Europe, especially among the rival powers of the Hispanic Monarchy. But combating the Black Legend does not require denying the abuses committed by Spaniards in America. On the contrary: it requires contemplating them within their historical context and, above all, distinguishing between what the Crown ordered and what certain conquistadors, encomenderos, and officials did in breach of the Monarchy's own norms.
And precisely there appears one of the most singular elements of Hispanic history: the existence, from very early dates, of a legal concern for the condition of indigenous peoples.
Isabella the Catholic and the protection of indigenous people
To understand this issue, one must go back even before the great continental conquests.
In the codicil of her will, granted in 1504, Isabella the Catholic expressly stated that the inhabitants of the Indies should be treated justly and that her successors should prevent them from suffering grievances in their persons and property. The queen recalled that the purpose of the Castilian presence in those lands was also linked to their evangelization and ordered that any grievance suffered be redressed,
although it is true that these extremes were not always met and the promulgation of specific legislation on the matter was necessary, and that it could be enforced.
The issue was not only moral. It was also legal. The Alexandrine bulls of 1493, granted by Pope Alexander VI, provided the Catholic Monarchs with a framework of legitimation for Castilian expansion and established among their objectives the propagation of the Christian faith. The bulls must be understood within the political and religious conception proper to medieval and modern Europe, and not as a kind of contemporary writing
From very early on, an intense debate developed about the legitimacy of the conquest, the nature of the American peoples, and the limits of Spanish power.
This debate would be extraordinarily important for the history of law.
The Laws of Burgos of 1512: when the Crown tried to regulate the conquest
In 1512, barely two decades after the discovery of America, the Monarchy promulgated the Laws of Burgos.
Their existence is especially relevant because it demonstrates that the Crown did not completely disregard the issue of the treatment of indigenous people. The provisions attempted to regulate labor relations, evangelization, and the living conditions of indigenous people within the encomienda system, which, however, remained a profoundly unequal institution and allowed encomenderos to obtain tributes and services from indigenous people. But there was a fundamental difference between legally recognizing obligations towards indigenous people and considering any form of exploitation without limit legitimate.
The Crown established concrete obligations and, at the same time, tried to control abuses.
The issue would explode again with much greater intensity during the reign of Charles I.
The New Laws and the defense of the indigenous people
The denunciations of abuses committed in America, led among others by religious figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas, fueled an enormous debate in the Hispanic Monarchy.
The result was the New Laws of 1542, promulgated by Charles I.
Its language is revealing. The legislation stated that indigenous people should be treated as free persons and vassals of the Crown and prohibited their enslavement. It also ordered authorities to pay special attention to mistreatment and punish excesses committed against them.
The New Laws also attempted to limit the power of the encomenderos and establish that encomiendas could not be transmitted indefinitely.
But here we also find an uncomfortable reality that should not be hidden.
However, the legislation was not always complied with, as the economic interests of the settlers and encomenderos were enormous, and the distances between America and the Court made effective application of royal orders difficult. Resistance became so intense that in 1545 Charles V had to modify the provision that prevented the hereditary transmission of encomiendas.
There were abuses, violence, exploitation, illegal enslavement, and unjust appropriations. There were conquistadors and encomenderos who acted motivated by wealth and power and who, on occasion, disobeyed the orders of the Crown; to deny it would be to falsify history.
But it is also not correct to convert each of these abuses into the expression of a Spanish policy deliberately designed to exterminate the American peoples. In fact, it is false that there was a genocidal intention on the part of the Spanish crown, firstly due to the motivation of the conquest, which was theoretically evangelizing, and secondly due to a more practical matter: labor. If Spain had intended to carry out a genocide, that is, to exterminate the indigenous people for being indigenous, the evangelizing and cultural interest would make no sense.
Spain morally judged its own conquest
There is, moreover, a fact that should occupy a much larger place in the usual explanations about the conquest of America: the Spanish passionately discussed the legitimacy of what they were doing.
In 16th-century Europe, it was not common for a conquering power to subject its own expansion to such a moral and legal examination.
Francisco de Vitoria, Bartolomé de las Casas, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, and many others participated in an extraordinarily complex debate about the nature of indigenous people, the rights of peoples, the legitimacy of war, and the limits of imperial power.
Specifically, Francisco de Vitoria is considered the father of international law of peoples, by recognizing the indigenous person as a rational being endowed with dignity and rights.
In the Hispanic Monarchy itself, there was, therefore, an intellectual discussion about whether the conquest could be considered just and under what conditions.
The history of Spain in America was, therefore, a combination of evangelization, conquest, miscegenation, exploitation, legislation, resistance, violence, cultural exchange, and the creation of new societies.
Reducing all of that to a single word —«genocide», «civilization», «plunder» or «feat»— impoverishes history.
The Black Legend and the need to look at the complete history
The so-called Black Legend was successful because it presented an extraordinarily simple image: a fanatical and cruel Spain that would have brought to America only violence, intolerance, and exploitation. The reality was much more contradictory.
Spain conquered territories. There were wars and violence. Very serious abuses and economic exploitation occurred. Innumerable indigenous people died, although the causes of the American demographic catastrophe were multiple and epidemics played a fundamental role.
But, simultaneously, the Monarchy itself developed specific legislation to regulate the conquest, protect the indigenous people, limit abuses, and recognize them as vassals.
And that legislation was not simply decorative: it generated real conflicts between the Crown and those who wanted to maintain their privileges.
Therefore, dismantling the Black Legend does not mean building a Pink Legend. It is not about replacing a negative myth with a positive one.
It is about recovering a history in which Spain appears with all its contradictions: conqueror and legislator, imperial and mestizo, religious and self-critical, capable of committing abuses and, at the same time, capable of legally discussing the legitimacy of those abuses.
Hispanidad cannot be understood simply as a prolongation of the old Hispanic Monarchy. It is something different: a cultural community built over centuries, formed by diverse peoples who share a language, a fundamental part of their legal tradition, an intertwined history, an enormous literary, artistic, and religious heritage, and certain ways of understanding society and life.
Spain does not own that community.
Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and so many other countries are not branches of any metropolis.
They are sovereign nations. Together with which Spain can and must develop a geopolitical alliance based on the defense of the interests of Spain and the rest of the Hispanic nations.
In a world increasingly dominated by large geopolitical blocs, the fragmentation of the Hispanic world constitutes a weakness. Spain alone has limited weight against the great powers; Mexico alone also. The same can be said, on a different scale, of Argentina, Colombia, Chile or Peru.
But let's imagine for a moment a Hispanic community capable of coordinating diplomatic positions, strengthening trade among its members, developing common infrastructures, cooperating in energy, scientific and technological matters, and jointly defending its interests before the great powers.
No sovereignty would have to disappear. Hispanidad could become one of the great cultural and economic communities of the 21st century.
For this, it would be necessary to overcome both the complexes inherited from the Black Legend and any temptation of imperial nostalgia. Spain would have to look at America not as an old colony, but as a community of sovereign peoples; and America would have to look at Spain not only as the old metropolis, but also as part of a shared history.
Because the best response to the Black Legend is not to live looking at the past.
Hispanidad should not be a nostalgia for the empire. It should be a proposal for the future.