Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain: Notes on a Shared History

Raquel Serrano González and Carlos Menéndez Otero

INTRODUCTION

The history of Anglo-Spanish relations is a matrix of shifting alliances and antagonism marked by the dual complexities of rivalry and cooperation, fear and fascination, neglect and influence. By the sixteenth century, both nations had developed far-reaching political and commercial ties, strengthened by strategic dynastic marriages dating back to the Middle Ages. According to Alexander Samson, it is the union between Queen Mary I and the then Prince Philip of Spain in 1554, which culminated decades of intense economic and diplomatic relations, that accounts for “England’s profound entanglement with Spain throughout the sixteenth century, for better or for worse.”¹ The lurking anxieties triggered by the conflicting interests and agendas of two powerful nations were neither successfully assuaged nor suffocated, as opposition to Philip soon emerged in England. It is Samson’s contention that this milestone period in Anglo-Spanish affairs signals the multifaceted causes at the core of the ambivalent feelings of hostility and attraction that would characterise Anglo-Spanish relations for years to come.²

Over the next decades political acrimony intensified, eventually leading to war and a planned invasion of England. The defeat in 1588 of the Spanish Armada due to a combination of poor management, miserable weather, and, only tangentially, English and Dutch opposition soon became, however, a pivotal narrative in English national discourse.³ Philip II of Spain’s expansionist endeavours were perceived as a threat in England, which provided a favourable seedbed for the emergence of the anti-Spanish Black Legend.⁴ Spain began ←9 | 10→to be vilified as the country of the Inquisition, which under the sway of religious bigotry and royal despotism tyrannically and ruthlessly oppressed the indigenous populations in the colonies. The gruesome imagery of the Black Legend fostered the creation of a distinctly English national identity, which was defined by opposition to the country’s Iberian rival. Well up to the twentieth century, the enduring lens of the Black Legend allowed Elizabethan England to be envisioned as “the champion of freedom, a latter-day David destined to triumph over the tyrannical Goliath: Philip II of Spain.”⁵

Scholars such as Barbara Fuchs and Alexander Sansom have observed that even the period when the strained Anglo-Spanish relations had escalated into war (1585–1604) was marked by a sustained—or, rather, intensified—attraction for Spanish culture, politics, and literature, as attested by the number of Spanish translations into English.⁶ By the sixteenth century, not only had Spain risen as the dominant political and military power in Europe, but it was also at the apex of the Golden Age of its literature, which enjoyed wide international recognition and acclaim. The complex, multifaceted English views on Spain in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are the result of the—apparently paradoxical—sentiments of admiration, fascination, fear, and envy aroused by Western Europe’s most powerful nation. As Fuchs points out, the religious and political rivalry between both countries resulted in “the constructedness of a literary history that glorifies conflict while minimizing influence”⁷ through “a variety of rhetorical operations: domestication, disavowal, or occlusion of Spanish sources.”⁸ It is thus relevant to uncover the occluded exchanges between two nations that have long emphasised their historical enmity over their many bonds.

By the early eighteenth century, the heroic, glorious deeds accomplished by Spain’s army and navy under Philip II were long past, and British fear of the nation’s power was on the wane. Still, “Spain remained a considerable commercial, maritime and imperial rival, and a revitalized Spain in the late eighteenth century played a role in helping to defeat and humiliate Britain during the ←10 | 11→American War of Independence.”⁹ The two countries were frequent contenders for economic and territorial growth during the long eighteenth century, being Britain’s formal acquisition of Gibraltar in 1713 an especially thorny issue. Particularly illustrative of this ongoing tension is the fact that Spain was at war with its insular rival in all five major international armed conflicts involving Britain in the eighteenth century, from the War of Spanish Succession (1701–14) to the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802).¹⁰

In the meantime, Anglo-Portuguese relations were, however, remarkably different. Friends and allies since the thirteenth century, both England and Portugal profited from the alliance, which allowed manifold diplomatic interactions, ranging from military and geopolitical strategies to commercial ties and dynastic unions. Still, Portugal was often imagined as sharing certain traits with Spain and, albeit to a lesser extent, could not escape being viewed through the dark lens of the Black Legend, which somehow still shaped British perceptions of its Iberian neighbour, “often rising and falling in line with Anglo-Spanish international tension and conflict.”¹¹ Yet the Enlightenment paved the way for another figuration of Iberia, which would add a nuanced layer to the persisting image of despotism and religious bigotry articulated in the Black Legend. Spain and Portugal came to be defined as anti-modern, backward nations, subjugated to the superstition and fanaticism of the all-powerful Catholic Church. In Britain, this narrative contributed to shaping a national identity by Othering the culture and people of the Iberian Peninsula: in stark contrast to Spain and Portugal’s primitivism, decline, and ignorance stood British civilisation, progress, and industriousness. Over time, this polarity was projected onto Europe, as a divide was created between the north, modernised and yielding potential for (economic) progress, and the marginal, uncivilised south.

The second half of the eighteenth century brought a new articulation of Iberia which, originarily developed by European travellers, cast Spain and Portugal in a more positive light. There emerged an increasing fascination with the picturesque scenery and exotic customs of a romanticised land whose medieval and chivalric past held a special allure. This imagery gained momentum in the nineteenth century, as it appealed and catered for the tastes and sensibilities of the Romantics. The allegedly intrinsic backwardness of the Peninsula took ←11 | 12→on bucolic overtones, as denizens of northern European cities flocked there in pursuit of “idealised pre-industrial societies and a desire to return to a pre-modern past.”¹² The Romantic imaginary pictured Spain as distinctly and exotically oriental, as a colourful land with a Moorish heritage, a world of sensual women, knights, gypsies, and bandits.

British interest in Iberia increased as a consequence of the Peninsular War (1808–14), in which Britain sided with Spain and Portugal against France. The conflict produced “a ‘new mythology of Spain’ turning the country into a ‘crucible of liberty,’”¹³ exemplary in its resistance against Napoleon’s tyranny. Such idealistic view of the Peninsula fitted all too well with the Romantic mystification of Iberia: “here was to be found a titanic struggle for liberty and national independence, in an exotic landscape and warm climate, set against a rich tapestry of medieval and Moorish history, in a land of bullfights and bolero dancers.”¹⁴ This celebratory outlook, however, did not constitute an epistemological break with old narratives, as “the image of Spain, its culture and its inhabitants did not evolve inexorably from negative to positive, from a Black Legend of Spanish tyranny to a rosy myth of Romantic Spain.”¹⁵ The emerging ideology coexisted with diverse imaginings of Iberia, ranging from the enduring demonisation of the Inquisition and Spain’s depraved colonial exploits, to the enlightened reading of the Peninsula as uncivilised, primitive, and backward. Thus, overlapping, conflicting interpretative repertoires all contributed to shaping British views on Spain and Portugal, which were complex and multi-layered rather than stable.