The Encounter of Two Worlds
Myth and Reality - The Legacy of Spain in America
For almost 500 years there has been a campaign of defamation against the legacy of Spain in America. It is sad to find that this lack of historical perspective, along with an entrenched Hispanophobia, has been going on for centuries in the Anglo-Saxon countries and consequently has brought about a subconscious, almost automatic, rejection of Hispanic values.
According to historian Dr. Powell: “Jaundiced views of the Hispanic world are taught very early in our schools and they are thoroughly inculcated by the time we enter college and university...The standard simplistic version of Spanish rule in America as a slavocracy, filled with tyranny, looting, bleeding taxation, and suffocating obscurantism, does not conform to the facts.” (1) (*) This attitude, based upon prejudices and ignorance, is damaging the image of the Hispanics in this country. Sometimes the Hispanics themselves, either by action or omission or simply because they were not aware of the truth of their history, have contributed to demean their own heritage.
Dr. Philip Wayne Powell, Emeritus Professor of history at the University of California, in his research on the “Black Legend” titled the “Tree of Hate”, (a book that every Hispanist should read) asserts that the study of 16th century Europe clearly reveals the universal pattern of cruelty, intolerance, and inhumanity which characterized the social, religious, and economic life throughout the continent...Examples of this were the reigns of Elizabeth I of England and her successor James I which were known for their most barbarous cruelty.
However, Dr. Powell affirms “that the Spain of the conquest period was a deeply civilized nation by all discernible European standards of that day, ...In jurisprudence, diplomacy, monarchical, religious and imperial concepts, and total culture, Spain was a European leader throughout the sixteen century and in much of the next.” (2) (*)
The rest o0f the history
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/808686/posts
And it was Spain that kept the Turks from Invading Italy and dominating the whole med. Not many people know about the Battle of Lepanto.