When most of us here think of fifteenth-century Spain, if we do at all, we inevitably think of the voyages of Columbus, and all which they involve. This is not surprising, since most people in the US tend to have little familiarity with the history of any of the Mediterranean states or their colonies or satellites. The English-speaking world is, after all, mostly oriented to that part of the Old World from which it derives its language and, largely, its culture. Since Columbus's expeditions directly affect those on this side of the Atlantic - after all, had nobody found the Americas, few of us would be here - most of us have at least heard of the backers of those expeditions.

     The voyages of Columbus, however, are only one aspect of the process by which, in a few years, these two monarchs took a backwater of a poor agricultural patchwork of feudal domains and turned it into the most powerful state in the world. It was also in this period that the peculiar problems which were to turn Spain into the decadent and bankrupt kingdom which fell prey to everybody else's ambitions from 1700 first took root. It is a long, fascinating and, at least in this country, little-known story.

Head of horse. Siculo-Punic Tetradrachm, struck from Spanish silver. Lot 159.

     Given the turbulent, multi-faceted history of the Iberian Peninsula we must start at the beginning, before the Moors, before the Romans, before even the Carthaginians. Horsemen in Spain have been battling each other since Ibero-Celtic days, before the Punic colonists made their mark; their poorly-understood language tells us little, and the surviving classical authors tell us little more. The Carthaginians settled here early, finding the silver mines of the Biblical Tarshish worth controlling; they gave the country its name. The name "Hispania" is a slight corruption of the Punic name, which means "land of rabbits". Certainly wild rabbits and hares abound; the Roman conquerors often depict an allegorical figure of Hispania reclining with a rabbit in the field.

Sestertius of Galba, proclaimed in Spain. Lot 252.

     In Roman times the land became prosperous. The fires of Celtiberian independence were quickly extinguished by a series of generals, from Scipio to Julius Caesar. Roman governors were sent; Roman colonies planted.

     Spain produced several emperors, from Galba and Otho through Trajan and Hadrian, not forgetting Theodosius the Great. As the Roman Empire expired Spain fell prey to Vandals and Visigoths, and the latter set up a kingdom which lasted until the Moorish invasion.

     The Visigoths themselves were not important so much for what they did - between the usual battles for power in an elective Germanic monarchy, and the perennial question of Catholic vs. Arian Christianity, it wasn't all that much - as for the myths which developed in their wake once their ship had sunk; they were the keepers of the True Faith holding out against the Infidel. The last of them, Roderick, attempted to stem the tide of erstwhile allies in a succession struggle, now come as invaders; he died fleeing from a crushing defeat in 712. The invaders mopped up all resistance until a skirmishing party met, and was defeated by, a band of mountaineers led by one Pelagius, or Pelayo, up in Asturias.

     These mountaineers - Pelayo was supposed, in later Spanish sources, to have been a Visigothic noble but whether or not he was is another matter - were insignificant; or, as one of the Arab sources put it, "thirty wild asses perched on a rock - they will certainly perish". They didn't, as it turned out. They at first made life annoying, then difficult, then impossible for their Muslim enemies.

     The reconquest of Iberia from the enemy shaped the Spanish character. The kingdoms and counties which appeared - Asturias, Leon, Castile, Aragon, Barcelona, Navarre and Portugal - squabbled among themselves to the benefit of the Moors often enough; when they united, however, their enemies felt the pressure.

     In the tenth century the Ummayad caliphs pushed them back; in the eleventh Ruy Diaz, the Cid (the title is a version of the Arabic Sidi, lord), he "of the beautiful beard", won a number of great victories over the now fragmented Moorish rulers and their North African allies and enemies. The tide of warfare turned this way and that, until with supreme effort a crusade in 1212 under Alfonso VIII met the last substantial North African (Almohad) army to enter Spain at Las Navas de Tolosa. On July 16 the Spanish won a hard-fought battle; henceforth the North Africans made little attempt to support their co-religionists in Spain.

     The last gasp was a Marinid attempt, in 1340; this invasion only got as far as the Rio Salado, where it too was crushingly defeated. Las Navas was at least a respectable distance inland; Salado was almost within sight of the sea, so far had Moorish fortunes sunk in the interval. The Moors were isolated, in the south of the peninsula, with dwindling resources, and the final result was never in doubt from that point on.

     Nonetheless more than two centuries passed before the final elimination of the Moorish political presence. The Reconquista petered out for a while; the Middle East occupied the minds of the Crusaders, and Spain was neglected. In addition the resources of the peninsula had been strained; as much of the warfare in this period consisted of raids by bands of light cavalry, which devastated vast swathes of countryside, the "frontier zone" was constantly being ravaged, and produced little. Hence it could be difficult to set a campaign in motion; much more satisfactory for all concerned simply to get the Moors to pay tribute and leave them in peace. It also resulted in much of Spain being transformed from a garden to a desert, as it were.

     Now, as always, the main enemy of Christian Spain was itself. The Hundred Years War, between France and England, involved Spain as well; the Castilians under their dynasty of Trastamara, gravitated toward France. Originally Castile had reason to support the English, but its king Pedro, known as "el Cruel", with good reason, found in Enrique de Trastamara, an illegitimate half-brother, a strong pretender to his throne. Pedro enlisted the help of Edward the Black Prince, while Enrique called in Bertrand du Gueschlin, later to become so famous under Charles V of France. Edward and Pedro were victorious; but Pedro didn't get his nickname without cause, and the Black Prince abandoned him in disgust. Enrique saw his opportunity, raised another army, and this time overthrew Pedro in 1369; henceforth Aragon and Castile were ruled by very close relatives.

     Isabella herself was born in 1451, to Juan II of Castile and his wife Isabella of Portugal. By the time Juan died he had produced three children: Enrique, fourth of the name, called "el Impotente"; Isabella, and a younger brother Alfonso. Juan himself died in 1454, leaving the throne to Enrique. Isabella seemed destined for the usual fate of princesses: a diplomatic marriage somewhere, to further the interests of her brother. Enrique himself turned out to have more problems than such a solution could solve, however.

     In 1451 Castile was by far the most powerful of the Spanish states, and in theory Enrique was the peer of any ruler in Europe. It wasn't quite that way in practice. One legacy of the Reconquista was that the great nobles whose ancestors had done great deeds of arms had often huge estates and were practically independent. Towns were often almost independent of the crown as well; many of them even had their own substantial militia forces, the "Hermandades" or brotherhoods, which provided much of the infantry and crossbowmen whose presence proved so important so often. Under a weak king these tended to increase their power, and Enrique was such a king.

     Enrique had one real failing: his inability to produce an heir. It was this, not his general weakness as a king, which produced his nickname of "el Impotente". Rumors flew, as they will under such circumstances: either he preferred any woman to his wife, or he was homosexual, or he simply couldn't deliver. He produced a daughter at last; or, rather, his wife did, but Rumor once again supplied the name of the father of this daughter Juana: a courtier named Beltran de la Cueva.

     Worse than this appeared: the king was too tolerant toward the enemies of the faith, namely Muslims and Jews, and that he was neglecting the all-important work of reconquest while Christendom was being eaten away by the Turks, among other things. He was also accused of favoring the Conversos, namely those who themselves, or whose families, had converted from Islam or Judaism during mass baptisms in 1391 or later; Rumor had it that many if not most practiced their old religion in secret.

     Eventually this simmering trouble boiled over into a revolt. In Alfonso the rebels found the perfect candidate: someone eligible for the throne, but a minor who could be controlled. Hence to those who controlled him he was the perfect ruler to increase their own power. Enrique, in response, set up a commission which conceded a lot to the nobles; but it wasn't enough, especially when he accepted its conclusions, then in a few days revoked the acceptance. He also took steps to gain the good will of Isabella, the third player in this game; she was not an important player, but neither was she safe to neglect, as a marriage to the wrong neighbor could have consequences. Hence Enrique took two steps for her benefit: he declared that she would not be made to marry against her will, and that she was officially proclaimed Enrique's hear, now that Alfonso was an enemy.

     By 1466 the dispute degenerated into open war. Alfonso's partisans generally had the better of it, and Isabella herself tended to prefer Alfonso, if only because he tended to be less of a libertine that Enrique.

     He also had one of the family failings: a passion for revenge, which went so far as to destroy the collection of exotic pets which Enrique had assembled; as if the killing of deer and bear-cubs would advance his cause. The members of this dynasty became known for taking vengeance on those who crossed them, in the Netherlands, England, Germany or elsewhere.

     Alfonso was well on his way, figure-head or not, vengeful or not, but he wasn't left to enjoy his triumph. In July 1468 the "king" caught the plague and died of it rather suddenly. This left the puppeteers holding loose strings; naturally they turned to Isabella. She for her part was too cagey to be caught thus; instead she gave her support to the rightful king, Enrique, albeit with conditions. Foremost among those was the usual condition about not being married off against her will; this was particularly important since she had become acquainted with Fernando of Aragon. As Alfonso of Portugal was a widower, and much older than Isabella, Fernando was the one she wanted. Enrique favored the Portuguese match, however.

     Fernando of Aragon was at the time crown prince of Aragon, heir to Aragon, Sardinia and Sicily, under his father Juan II. Juan had been king of Navarre in his own right, and he ruled Aragon with a heavy hand. The Catalans, always jealous of their rights, kept the country in turmoil. Eventually Juan brought the rebels to heel. He supported Fernando's ambition to marry Isabella; it would unite the two largest states in Spain, and make them a match for France, as well as keeping Portugal at bay.

Ferdinand and Isabella. Gold Doble Excelente. Lot 18..

     The two were well matched. Fernando was the foreign-policy expert, used to dealing with an overseas empire; anyone able to keep Sicily under reasonable control thereby acquires impressive credentials in that regard. He was also the expert military commander, although some of his errors during the Granada campaign might suggest otherwise. Isabella for her part ruled in Castile; devout almost to fanaticism, a shrewd judge of character, and a great organizer, she also had the advantage of her sex in that many grandees thought her incompetent by nature. They found otherwise, but usually too late.

Facade of the Church of San Pablo, Valladolid, built between 1487 and 1496. Photo c. 1870.

     Meanwhile all was not well. Enrique was, to say the least, not amused when the couple took advantage of his traveling on business in 1469 to take a trip to Valladolid. Fernando meanwhile traveled incognito, disguised as a servant. When they arrived they arranged for their wedding. Although they were near relations, they were armed with a Papal dispensation; it was, however, like so many medieval Papal documents, bogus, having been forged for the occasion by the office of the Archbishop of Toledo. The marriage took place on 18 October. From the start it was a full partnership; their motto expresses it best: "Tanto monta, monta tanto, Isabel como Fernando", roughly "Like one, like the other, Isabel and Ferdinand", and their emblems also display this partnership: a two-ox yoke and a sheaf of arrows; the first symbolic of a team pulling together; the second, the now familiar symbol of strength in unity.

Reverse of Silver 8 Reales, showing emblems of yoke and arrows. Lot 466.

     With the fury of a weak man frustrated, Enrique reacted in a rage. To attack the Moors was hard work; to disinherit Isabella was, he thought, easy. Accordingly he named Juana, "la Beltraneja", as his heiress. There matters stood until Enrique died in 1374. Isabella was immediately proclaimed queen; so was Juana, now married, at least formally, to Alfonso of Portugal. The Portuguese invaded in support of Juana's claim. The war dragged on for five years, but in the end Fernando's military skill and Isabella's administration proved too strong for Alfonso, who abandoned all claim to Castile.

     In 1479 also Juan of Aragon finally died, at the age of 83, remarkably old for a Spanish king. Alfonso inherited all his territories with the exception of Naples; that came on the death of Ferrante in 1494. For the moment all immediate goals were achieved; it was time for big projects.

     One of these projects was the curbing of the pretensions of the nobility. Above all else the Catholic Kings believed in their own prerogatives as rulers. The "Divine Right of kings", which landed Charles I of England in such hot water, was not a new concept; it merely took a ruler strong enough to enforce it. It was of course entirely opposed to feudal custom, under which the king was a leader more or less elected by the nobles as war-chief and judge. The usual means of curbing nobles were applied: look for allies, in this case among the towns, whose citizens resented feudal control, and goad troublemakers into hopeless rebellion; when they are crushed, their lands are forfeit and become crown property. It worked well in Portugal; it worked well in France; in Spain it took a little longer.

     The biggest was the final stage of the Reconquista. The kingdom of Granada remained, like a patch of blight, as an insult to the True Faith. It was high time it was erased; it would help compensate for the loss of Constantinople. Considerable preparation went into this conquest; indeed, one of the most disreputable chapters of Spanish history relates directly to the preparation.

     Everybody has heard of the notorious Spanish Inquisition. It was set up in Castile under the auspices of Isabella in 1483 mainly as a church-based counterintelligence service. The main enemy was the Muslim Moors, possibly supported by the formidable Turks.

     The danger of a "fifth column" within Castile itself was more than plausible. The remaining Muslims and Jews in the former kingdoms, as well as the large number of recent converts whose dedication to the Church was suspect, made some sort of spy service a necessity.

     The religious element gave it the backing of the other great force in Spain, and given that all good Christians were required to attend Mass made it easy to keep an eye on suspects. Combined with a reformed Hermandad, no longer a series of town militias but a true national police force, answerable only to the Crown, this provided a powerful instrument of policy. With all the worst features of an ecclesiastical secret police the Inquisition performed its task well - too well, as it turned out. The danger from Muslim agents was exaggerated, and the Jews were never a threat; it did, however, serve to stifle any sort of innovation, and indeed any activity which might give rise to envy or alarm in the neighbors.

     The tribunals were secret, as befitted a counterintelligence service. Isabella insisted on this; knowing the human desire for revenge it was necessary to conceal the identity of the accusers and informants. In practice it meant that revenge tended to be taken by means of secret denunciations; even high ecclesiastics were often targeted. It provided an easy means of dealing with potential rebels as well.

     One of the worst consequences of the attitude behind the Inquisition was the notion of "purity of blood". This meant the presence, or absence, of Conversos in someone's ancestry. Conversos being by definition suspect, of a distinct an perverse "race", it was deemed good not to have any Converso ancestors. This business of "limpieza de sangre" was taken to extreme in the sixteenth century, when it became a requirement for admission to just about any post or privilege of any importance.

The Court of the Lions, in the Alhambra, Grenada. Photo c. 1865.

     Meanwhile preparations fore the war progressed. The incident which set it in motion was a raid and counter-raid, with the Granadans seizing Zahra in December 1481, and the Castilians returning the favor at Alhama in February 1482. What kept the Spanish offensive from stalling was the dissension in the Granadan ruling family, with the king's son, Abu 'Abd Allah, usually rendered "Boabdil", revolting and proclaiming himself king, as Mohammed XII. Both factions tried to gain support by waging war on the Castilians; Boabdil was, however, not much of a commander, and was defeated and captured, then released to stir up trouble as a Castilian vassal. A third king, Al Zagal, brother of the previous king, set himself up as Mohammed XIII, to further complicate matters.

     Meanwhile, as a boa constricts a rat, the Castilians tightened their iron grip on Granada. Their progress was slow but steady, consisting mainly of sieges. Fernando's half brother Alfonso was a master of siegecraft, particularly with heavy bombards, and total victory was only a matter of time, despite several setbacks.

     By 1487 Boabdil was willing to surrender, but his people would not hear of it, so he was forced to fight.

     The end came at last, in 1491, when the Castilians, having conquered the rest of the kingdom, settled down in front of Granada itself. They were there to stay. They built a full-blown town, called Santa Fe, as their siege headquarters. Eventually conditions in the city became intolerable, and the city capitulated on terms. The "Catholic Kings" entered Granada in triumph on 6 January 1492. At last King Roderick was well and truly avenged.

     The conquest of Granada began the events of the year which is arguably the single most important in terms of the history of the modern world, and Spain had something to do with most of the events. In this year Roderigo Borja, himself a Spaniard, was elected Pope as Alexander VI; he was so dissolute in his private life that he lacked all sense of shame in promoting the interests of his illegitimate children, themselves notorious. In the Spanish church of the fifteenth century he was only one of the more open practitioners of what the archpriest of Hita describes in his "Book of Good Love" of circa 1335. Off in barbarous northern lands thinkers began to seriously wonder how the head of the Church could so flout the teachings of the Church, and out of this came the Reformation.

     Also in 1492 the Spanish monarchs issued an edict on 30 March requiring all the Jews in Spain to convert or leave the country; Spain lost perhaps 200,000 of its most productive citizens, to the benefit of those countries in which they settled. Much of the rise of the art of printing in the Netherlands, for example, was a result of Jewish and convert settlement there. And, above all, a rather odd, cranky Genoese named Christopher Columbus, refusing to take "No" for an answer, finally convinced the king and queen that to encourage trade with the Indies Spain ought to explore the one route not monopolized by someone else.

Ferdinand and Isabella. Reverse of Doble Excelente, showing arms. Lot 18.

     Under the Catholic Kings trade in general was encouraged. Part of that encouragement was the introduction of a sound trade coinage, the Excelente, equivalent to the ducat, in gold and the Real and its multiples and fraction in silver. With the resources freed up now that Grenada had fallen, and partly with resources looted from the Jews, they now had the funds to encourage the search for trade routes. Columbus's scheme may have seemed hare-brained at the time, but it offered the best chance to break the foreign monopolies on the spice trade.

     The Italians, mainly from Venice, traded with Asia via overland routes. The Portuguese were in the process of getting there via circumnavigation of Africa; da Gama finally made it to India in 1498. Columbus was convinced that it was possible to get there by striking the right latitude and simply sailing west. Despite much popular misinformation, all educated and some uneducated opinion knew perfectly well that the earth was more or less spherical since Roman times; anyone reading the standard thirteenth-century encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais, for example, or Dante's description of the center of his (hollow-sphere) Inferno, must realize this. Columbus got the size wrong, sailed out to find the shores of China, and found a new continent in his way. He remained convinced that it was in fact the East; and watched in growing frustration as others collected the fruits of his efforts.

     It is interesting to imagine what Columbus's reaction must have been when the lookout first spotted land late that night of 11-12 October 1492. The reports are not much help. Like most events of the greatest importance, the principals often have no idea of that importance. He merely states in his report that he sailed 33 days from the Canary Islands to the Indies and found "muy muchas islas pobladas con gente sin numero". The finds of treasure came later, with Cortes and the rest of the conquistadors, who took the Reconquista attitude and transplanted it to another region, this one not of Moors, but of other infidels. They found, not gold or spices, but silver in unimaginable quantities.

     The later history of Spain's involvement is in some ways a sorry tale; the vast riches found resulted in Spain's dependency on imported cash rather than on trade and industry, and the treasure proved insufficient, so that trade and industry were sorely missed when they were gone beyond recall. But that was in the future, as was the result of the policies against Conversos. With Granada fallen, the crusaders did not know when to stop. They attacked dissidents, real and imagined, of all sorts.

     The Moors had capitulated on terms, one of which was that they be allowed to practice their customs in peace. This state of affairs did not continue for long; in 1499 the Moors, faced with enforced conversion or expulsion, chose to rebel. They were put down by 1502, but the trouble simmered. The Moriscos, as the converts from Islam were called, were always unhappy at the discrimination they faced; they rebelled against Philip II in 1568, and were finally expelled early in the seventeenth century. The loss of their industry only hastened the Spanish decline.

     Meanwhile the personal affairs of the Catholic Kings were mixed. They produced children, mostly daughters. Their one son Juan died in 1497. The eldest daughter, Isabella, married Philip the Handsome, the Hapsburg whose previous wife had been Marie of Burgundy. Another, Catherine, married Arthur, Prince of Wales, who died young; she then married Henry VIII, with great consequences.

     Isabella died in 1504; the Castilians proclaimed Philip as king. Juana was in fact the rightful ruler, but she showed signs of mental instability. Fernando's claim, being based on his wife, was not well regarded, and he stayed in Aragon. Philip's career was brief, however, as he died in 1506, leaving the throne to his son Charles, with Juana as regent. As she was completely deranged by her grief at Philip's death, earning for her the epithet of la Loca, the Crazy, Ferdinand took over as regent. In the remaining ten years of his life Fernando consolidated his gains, augmenting the royal power, using every trick in Machiavelli's book, and a few of his own. On his death Charles, later the Emperor Charles V, took over without opposition. His rule caused many problems which were masked by the wealth of the New World, as well as the vigor of his military exploits; but that, as they say, is another story.

     In an article of this size it is impossible to do the Catholic Kings justice. The story of how they turned their patrimonies into the great nation it was, and in many ways still is, is a remarkable one in itself, not least because they started out with so much against them. Much of what they did we take for granted, especially those of us in this European transplant called America.