The Remapping of Spain: La Leyenda Negra

Since the circulation of Brevìsima Relaciόn de la Destrucciόn de las Ίndias by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Black Legend (Leyenda Negra), the recurrent image of the Spanish Empire as an absolutist political entity due to its criminal operations against the populations of the New World, came to underpin all projections of Spain to the outside world. In the light of the imperial rivalry between Spain and Britain, there was limited space for mutual sympathy and an abundance of texts that sought to denigrate Spain as a despotic, brutal imperial power. In their endeavour to differentiate themselves from the supposed darkness of Catholic Spain, British and American travel writers formed a travel canon that reproduced images of Otherness, deconstructing every cultural aspect, when confronted with the Spanish landscape and society.This volume pertains to the depictions of Spanish society and the Spaniards in ten Western travelogues which follow the country's steps of transformation from a European superpower into a fallen kingdom struggling to reconstruct its identity after the Disaster of 1898 and the subsequent loss of its leading colonising status.