Javier Rubio Donzé is an architect, historian, and the founder of Academia Play, a leading platform in the field of historical popularisation with more than three million followers. He has also published several books, including La historia como nunca antes te la habían contado (History as you have never been told before), La historia de España como nunca antes te habían contado (The history of Spain as you have never been told before), and Veinticinco grandes batallas de la historia (25 great battles of history). His latest book, España contra su leyenda negra: Mitos, agravios y discursos (Spain against its black legend: myths, grievances and discourses), analyses the Black Legend and its current relevance, as well as the emergence of a new Hispanism that seeks to make politics out of Hispanity and the Black Legend.
You just published a book on the Black Legend—a legend which portrays the Spanish empire and people as barbaric, cruel, and intolerant, in contrast to enlightened and advanced Protestant nations—which joins many others recently published on this subject. It seems clear that the Black Legend is still alive.
Yes, the Black Legend is very much alive. It is true that in the academic sphere we do not usually come across articles on the Black Legend, but in everyday life, in films and television, we see it time and time again. It is also on the lips of some politicians, because it serves to underpin the discourse of certain ideologies. The Spanish Left, especially the extreme Left, buys its theses, as does the Left in Latin America and on the Russia Today channel. I think we have to de-dramatise it and learn to relativise it. Many so-called Hispanists say that there is a geopolitical struggle between blocs, and that the Anglo-Saxon bloc, our bitter enemy, uses the Black Legend to undermine Spain’s prestige. This could have happened in the 16th and 17th centuries, or during the war against the United States in 1898. In fact, the term “Leyenda Negra” arose out of this war during a lecture in Paris by Emilia Pardo Bazán in 1899 to define the attacks on Spain by the American tabloids. At the time, it made sense to justify their actions in the war, but I don’t see the value of it now. In fact, every U.S. president since 1968 has celebrated Hispanic Heritage Week, which Ronald Reagan turned into Hispanic Heritage Month; and every year the U.S. president gives a speech in which figures such as Columbus or Junípero Serra are mentioned. There are no government policies that undermine Spain’s prestige.
Apart from its political character, the Black Legend is a strong component of popular culture. For example, in the case of the misnamed “Invincible Armada,” English academics recognise its propagandistic character—but, of course, it is another matter for ordinary Englishmen.
Yes, but it is increasingly being challenged. The BBC even broadcast a documentary debunking the myth of the Invincible Armada. It was also very critical of the nationalist discourse that emerged under Elizabeth I. Even in the United States, where we see the anti-colonialist discourse of the Woke movement, the attack is not exclusively against Spain, but against all European countries. In the book, I list all the statues that have been torn down since 1992. In 2020, with the death of George Floyd, even the statues of the Founding Fathers were attacked. That is as much to say that it is not an anti-Spanish movement. There is even a certain American Hispanophilia. Richard L. Kagan explains it very well in a book called The Spanish Craze: America’s Fascination with the Hispanic World, 1779–1939. In other words, there is not only Hispanophobia, as many would have us believe.
Hollywood is a faithful follower of the Black Legend. For example, in very recent films such as Praying for the Devil or The Vatican Exorcist, the Spanish Inquisition is portrayed as the darkest era of the Church.
Yes, and sadly, Hollywood’s power is immense. For example, 1492: The Conquest of Paradise, the Ridley Scott film partly financed by the Spanish government, begins with a terrifying image of Spain, where the Inquisition persecuted people for daring to dream. Even superhero films such as Eternals portray the conquest of Mexico as genocide. But, as Salvador de Madariaga said, this has much more to do with ignorance than malevolence. And unfortunately we will continue to find these clichés in many films. The same can be seen in the museum of torture in Toledo, where you can see instruments of torture that were never used by the Inquisition, such as the iron maiden, which is a romantic invention of the 19th century. Years ago there was a sign in the museum indicating that the iron maiden was known in Castile as “the Italian dream”—this is insane, but it’s the kind of thing that many people want to see when they visit a museum related to the Inquisition.
Earlier you spoke of the “geopolitical” use of La Hispanidad (Hispanic Heritage). Shouldn’t it be a tool to rescue the common history of the nations of Hispanic America?
Yes, it should. That is what a Hispanist should do and what many have done so far, including French, British and American Hispanists—to study the past “sine ira et studio”(without anger or passion), as Tacitus said. Spain has many things to boast about because it has a fascinating past; but also, like all nations, it has its dark moments. The duty of a historian is to study all of that, not to play politics. Those who coined the term “Hispanidad”—Unamuno, Zacarías de Vizcarra, and Ramiro de Maeztu—did not see it as a political struggle, but as a twinning with countries with the same culture, language or religion.
The misnamed Hispanists are perverting the term “Hispanist.” They even made a protocol, after their last congress in Santa Pola, in which they try to redefine what La Hispanidad is and what it is to be a Hispanist. Until now, a Hispanist was a scholar of Spanish history and culture, and there are many British and American Hispanists. But now, some claim that a Hispanist is an activist who tries to create a ‘pink legend’ of the Spanish Empire, who seeks to create a struggle against the Anglo-Saxon bloc, and who opposes liberalism because the greatest representative of liberalism is the United States. They use Hispanism as a rallying flag, but they have nothing to do with real Hispanism.
Those who defend this ‘Hispanism’ then support Vladimir Putin, whose last speech defending Bolivar, Castro, Allende, and Che Guevara was laden with Black Legend overtones—the same kind of speech that has been heard for years on Russia Today.
It is a huge contradiction. Marcelo Gullo says that the Black Legend is a marketing operation by the British to Balkanise Spanish America; at the same time he is a close friend of Alexander Dugin (he even wrote a book foreword for him), who in 2017 supported the independence of Catalonia. This is not unusual, because he had previously collaborated with Chavismo, which is one of the great promoters of the Black Legend. He wrote some books, including La insubordinación fundante, which Hugo Chávez read and tried to put into practice in Venezuela.
This false Hispanism tries to manipulate people by exploiting their feelings and evoking events of the past, in order to bring them into today’s geopolitics. What lies in the background is an anti-European, anti-liberal, and anti-Anglo-Saxon hatred, and a totally unhinged ideology ranging from toxic nationalism to Stalinist communism. The bad news is that many conservatives are buying into this thesis. The liberal-conservative alliance has always worked, as we have seen after World War II, but now many are beginning to think that conservatives have to break away from liberals and join with others, such as those who defend Putin or Hamas, or those who want to undermine the Western bloc and would prefer Spain to be in a bloc with Russia or China.
“The West must be destroyed” is the title of one of the chapters of your book.
Yes, because at bottom of all this is an anti-Western and very perverse reactionary mindset. What underlies it is a hatred of the West and of liberal democracies. Embracing the Spanish flag and the cross of Burgundy, the new Hispanists are actually spreading Russian propaganda that seeks to destroy the West. And deep down, this Hispanism has a lot to do with another great ally of Russia, the indigenism advocated by Maduro and the Puebla Group, because it is based on the same victimhood. They look for the eternal enemy to blame for everything: for the indigenists the bad guys are the Spaniards, and for these Hispanists the bad guys are the British. This is not real history, and neither the Black Legend nor La Hispanidad should be used as a propaganda weapon on the political battlefield.
