Spanish sovereigns

Christian Spain from the Reconquista to the fall of the Habsburgs

The Muslims of North Africa crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711 and conquered the whole of the Iberian peninsula with the exception of Asturias and the Pyrenees. It was from these two havens that the Reconquista was launched.

The little kingdom of Asturias was founded in 718 by the Visigoth chieftain Pelagius in the first official act of Christian resistance, but the Muslim government of Al-Andalus maintained its authority from 711 to 1492 over a territory whose borders shifted constantly under the impact of Christian thrusts. The subsequent Christian kingdoms – Catalonia, Aragon, Castile, Galicia, León, Navarre and Andalusia – existed in a state of flux, oscillating between division and unification, and in the sixteenth century the Habsburg dynasty found this ideal terrain for establishing an immense empire. 

In this context of ceaseless political and territorial redefinition, and so of cultural exchange, what did Spain's Christians conserve of their long contact with Al-Andalus? And what part did the Mediterranean play in the building of pre-modern Spain?

The Reconquista and the Spanish Middle Ages

Until the late thirteenth century the Reconquista saw the northern kingdoms join forces around common goals. In the thirteenth–fifteenth centuries the independent Spanish kingdoms were faced with a range of historical circumstances which saw the rise of Christian cities generate marked regional differences.

In the early years of the Arab conquest Christian communities – known as the Mozarabs – found themselves under Muslim domination; their gradual emigration northwards injected an Oriental influence into the ambient Christian culture, producing a Visigoth-European mix one of whose results was Mozarabic art. However the conquest of Toledo by Alphonse VI, who ruled from 1072–1109, was the real beginning of a Muslim-Christian syncretism. 

The Muslims who did not emigrate after the Christian reconquest were called mudéjars (from the Arabic mudajjan) and intermingled with a population made up of Christians and Jews. Mudéjar art was the outcome of cross-fertilisation between the Hispanic-Moorish tradition and medieval European influences. This cultural crucible brought change to language – Castilian adopted many Arabic terms – as well as to institutions and customs, farming techniques and the crafts: ceramics, textiles and woodworking. The kings of Castile and Aragon lived in the Muslim palaces of their conquered cities and took them as models for new buildings: Alphonse VI's residence in Cordoba, for example, is typical of the mudéjar palaces of the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries. The rooms are rectangular, flanked with alcoves reached via a gallery opening onto a Muslim garden in which two paths intersected at right angles. The rooms were decorated with stucco and the wall bases were with ceramic mosaic work, while the ceilings were of gilded and painted wood. Carpets, tapestries, Cordovan leather cushions, marquetry chests and lustred ceramic ware all testified to a taste for Islamic fashion. 

From the fourteenth century onwards the flowering of art in Europe was directly linked to royal patronage. In addition to its Muslim influence, Spain then became a stronghold of the Gothic.

In the thirteenth century the Royal House of Aragon under James I (r. 1229–76) sought domination of the Mediterranean from Barcelona, a project finally accomplished under Alphonse V of Aragon (r. 1416-58) who entered Naples in 1442. Politically the Western Mediterranean became Catalan. From the surrounding territory Barcelona and Valencia attracted wool, metals, leather, oil, rice and saffron, and so became the bases for trade with North Africa and staging posts in an expanding Occident. Merchants from Barcelona could be found in Constantinople, Egypt and Rhodes, and the city developed into one of Europe's biggest financial centres. Military intervention in Sicily and the opening up of its markets towards the Maghreb and the Orient made Barcelona the heart of a vast maritime and trading empire.

The Catholic Kings and the Spanish Renaissance

The power of the Aragonese crown was at its height when Ferdinand of Aragon (r. 1474–1504) married Isabella of Castile in 1469, thereby unifying the two kingdoms. The reign of the "Catholic Kings" triggered the Spanish Renaissance that would end under Philippe II (r. 1556–98).

In 1492 the taking of Granada from the Nasrides marked the final step in the Reconquista, at the same time as Christopher Columbus, under Spanish patronage, discovered America. This "crucial year" began a long period of hegemony for the Iberian Peninsula.

The second half of the fifteenth century saw the Peninsula opened up to outside influence. There were more and more contacts between the courts of Europe and Spain was inundated with art from Italy and France – but above all from Germany and Flanders. This art from the North was given fresh twists by local artists and fuelled various Iberian traditions: for example, Gil de Siloe, from northern Spain, ran the sculpture workshop at the Carthusian monastery in Miraflores from 1486–99. It was there that he created for John II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal a dual tomb in the Northern European manner: an eight-branched star whose design belongs to the Mudéjar tradition, with the placing of the recumbent statues and the proliferating ornamentation being thoroughly Spanish.

The Catholic Kings were great builders: they refurbished cathedrals and constructed monasteries and big public buildings such as hospitals. However, in the second half of the fifteenth century the Mediterranean lost the ascendancy it had enjoyed since the late eleventh century: the future now belonged to the nations of the Atlantic and their ships.  

Charles V (r. 1516–56) was the first sovereign of the Habsburg dynasty and the first king of all Spain. Already the possessor of Naples, Sicily and the Low Countries, he inherited Burgundy from his grandfather, Maximilian I of Habsburg. In 1519 he was made emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the dominant role Spain acquired in Europe was reinforced by the colonial empire it was accumulating. The conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico by Hernando Cortez in 1519–21, and of the Incas in Peru by Francisco Pizarro in 1531–33 laid the groundwork for Spanish control in the 16th century of almost all of South America, Florida, Cuba and, in Asia, the Philippines.

Under Philip II (r. 1556–98) Portugal, which controlled territories in Asia, Africa and Brazil, was annexed by Spain, which thus became the world's largest empire – too large in fact: decline set in and by the end of Philip's reign wars, famines, epidemics and the Inquisition were heralding the downfall to come.

The sixteenth century was one of artistic and cultural prestige for Spain. Tirso de Molina and Cervantes were the leading literary lights, Ignatius of Loyola founded the Company of Jesus and mysticism was taking flight with St Teresa of Avila. The visual arts saw a striving to contain the "plateresque"[1] style via the rules of soberness and balance of the Italian Renaissance, and the kings frequently had recourse to painters who were either of Italian origin or, like El Greco, trained in Italy.

The influence of Hispano-Moorish culture endured into the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries in Spain and, by extension, in Latin America. However it began to decrease with the appearance of new European forms: Northern Late Gothic and then the Italian Renaissance. The second half of the sixteenth century saw the end of the system that had structured the Mediterranean world through the Middle Ages.

The Golden Century

Seventeenth-century Spain under Philip III (r. 1598–1621), Philip IV (r. 1621–65) and Charles II (r. 1665–1700) underwent a total political and economic collapse that cost it its worldwide hegemony.

And yet the "Golden Century" shone spectacularly in all the arts: Calderon and Cervantes in literature, Francesco Correa in music, the cities of Valladolid, Seville and Granada in sculpture, Velázquez, Ribera, Zurbaran and Murillo in painting, and the creative hotbeds of Madrid and Seville. An enormous artistic output had found a truly Spanish idiom, one based on a long history of interchange with the rest of Europe and Muslim culture.

The Spanish branch of the Habsburgs died out with Charles II, who left no heir. The throne of Spain passed to Louis XIV's great-nephew, the Duke of Anjou who, as Philip V, inaugurated the Bourbon dynasty.

E.D.-P.