Catholic Spain

In 1492, the same year Ferdinand & Isabel sent Columbus to sail the ocean blue, the Catholic Kings, as they are affectionately known here in Spain, also finished expelling the last Jews. Actually, they weren't all expelled- the 'conversos' who denied their religion & culture, who traded olive oil for lard, kosher for pork, Sabbath for high Mass, were allowed to stay. I guess that sounds like it makes the first statement true: all Jews were expelled leaving only those who were no longer Jewish, but in-fact many who stayed remained Jewish in their hearts & secretly brought their children up Jewish.

As an aside, because this essay is not about those Jews, being Jewish, or even Fernando & Isabela: I remember reading in the fifth volume (if I remember correctly- the Renaissance tome) of that most charming of historians, Will Durant's, History of Civilization-- that like the Parsee in Persia (the followers of Zoroaster)-- the Spanish Jews took to ships & tried to find a new home. They sailed from the South of Spain across the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean but weren't allowed to disembark in Portugal. They went on to the Bay of Biscay but weren't welcomed in France either. Britain also turned them away but in Holland (the Low Lands) they were given berth. Durant concludes: from that point on, Spain goes downhill while Holland goes up.

The Jews weren't the only victims of the Christian God's representatives. After centuries of struggle it was the Catholic Kings who finally vanquished the last Moorish stronghold & signed a treaty of surrender that allowed King Boabdil (who had been so very tolerant of the Christian fundamentalists' insults to Islam in his Kingdom) & a limited number of his people to live in a certain area around Granada- forever. They waited two weeks until they felt their power was consolidated & then threw Boabdil out too (but not the treaty- I have read it). There is a spot on the route followed by Boabdil & his retinue between Granada & the sea where the king turned from the last vantage point to see his beloved Granada, the fecund jewel of the Moorish kingdom (the abundance of fresh water supplied by the snow capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, literally: 'snowed mountain range'). The spot has been called: El Suspiro del Moro, The Moor's Sigh, ever since. Worse was in store for him when he got home: having forfeited a 9 centuries-old kingdom, he cried disconsolately for his loss & shame prompting his mother to remark: Cry like a woman for that which you weren't able to defend like a man!"

The Catholic Kings went on to a distinguished career as, possibly, the cruellest religious despots in history, or at least- they laid the groundwork for four centuries of atrocities carried out in the name of their benevolent & forgiving God. The Holy Christian Crusades crossed the sea to 're'capture Jerusalem from the infidels & were followed by the 'Conquistadores' ('conquerors'), Cortes & Pizarro, among others, who crossed the ocean & managed to wipe off the face of the earth two old cultures, 8 million people, in three years,* even though they had already stolen-- by right of arms-- all the gold in the country.

After Atahualpa had successfully filled one room with gold & two with silver in exchange of his freedom, Pizarro decided to kill him anyway- his grounds? He merited execution because he was an infidel. Atahualpa baulked at being burned alive, because he believed if he were, he would have no afterlife. The priest (Pizarro's partner) offered an exquisitely ironic redemption: if Atahualpa converted to Christianity he would be allowed to die garroted instead of burnt. Ironic on the one hand because when he converted to Christianity the charges against him as infidel no longer held & on the other, because his conversion to the Christian creed was motivated by a belief in a different religion.

Pizarro & the priest offered this option only in the hopes that the Inca would all convert once the king had, & could therefore be governed more easily. Instead, the Inca turned to the new king & were, shortly after, dispatched by uncommonly efficient, cold-blooded murder.

Most of the Gold came to Spain only to be spent in Holland where it stayed.

Then there was the Sainted Inquisition who held brutal & corrupt political sway well into the nineteenth century. I bought, at auction in Madrid, an eighteenth century book (published by the offices of the Inquisition in wood-block instead of moveable type**) that describes in detail how to torture Jews in order to save their souls.

What a religious history! Spain's church make the most vengeful Greek God seem harmless fluff...

I also have a photograph of a church in a small town in Spain near which I once lived. It wasn't a photo of the unremarkable church however, but of the tiles near the main entrance painted with Christ floating above the words: This church was rebuilt in 1936 after the Marxist hordes destroyed it. The 'Marxist hordes' refers to the Spanish Republicans who lost the civil war to the dictator- Franco. Once Franco was in power he had the children taught, in Catholic schools, that these very bad men & the cruelty both excused & imposed by the Church, were actually good men doing the right thing. So, right up to the end of the twentieth century Spain has had a violent & corrupt church.

How does today's Spaniard feel about his Catholicism? I read of a census that was taken just a few years ago that claimed 76% of Spanish people were Catholic. But when the researchers went on to ask questions about the religion, its moral infrastructure & tenets, they found that the answers given only qualified 19% as actually Catholic. But more impressive than that, I would say, is the way Spanish people swear. I am not even talking about the vulgar swearing one doesn't say in front of children, but common swearing when one drops a hammer on his foot or sips coffee that is too hot; in front of children, on television... Are you ready? Please don't read on if you will be offended- Me cago en la cara de Dios & la Puta Madre que le parió! Or- I shit on the face of God & the whore mother who bore him...! Can someone capable of saying that really be God-fearing?

I think the tradition is deep but in their hearts they are cynical.

* in a world that probably held fewer than a billion people, each culture largely isolated from the others, meaning: it makes '8 million' people an even more outrageous number if the people that any single culture might be aware of at that time could probably be measured in the tens of millions.

** Wood-block printing only allows small editions as the blocks quickly wear out; this book was not meant for the pleasure of the reading public (in France Voltaire was leading the age of Enlightenment at the around the same time) but rather the spiritual edification & practical instruction of priest/torturers. When I hold it in my hands I wonder at whose bloody fingers turned its leaves in its 200+ years...