On the second day of January 1492, Boabdil, the last Moorish ruler in Spain, reluctantly handed over the keys of Granada and the beautiful Alhambra palace to the Christian monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.   This was the catalyst for an extraordinary time.  By the end of the year, Christopher Columbus had discovered the Americas for Spain and, within thirty years, Spain had unexpectedly exploded, like a meteor, onto the international scene to become the dominant power in Europe.  Rich, powerful and newly intolerant, Spain had finally come of age, after a sustained history of disunity and international impotence. In fact, until 1492 Spain had never been united for long, in any meaningful sense, as a single nation.  Over a thousand years it had been invaded or colonised by the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Vandals and the Visigoths.  Finally, in 711 the Moors crossed into Spain and, helped by ferocious…

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Politics in Spain, the Transition to democracy BY NICK SNELLING Imagine living in one of the most backward countries in Western Europe – a country ruled by the longest serving fascist dictator of the twentieth century, who had murdered and oppressed countless people after one of the most brutal civil wars in modern Europe.  Think what it must be like to be in a country where you are not allowed to speak your provincial dialect and where the police are a fearsome para-military force, the law is arbitrary and the media is controlled by the state. Consider a creaking infrastructure with an uneven economy and much of the population existing at subsistence level, at direct variance to the rest of Europe.  To make matters worse, imagine an uncertain future with a dying dictator.  Perhaps, you are in your mid-fifties and, as a young man, fought in the civil war, with…

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What did the Moors in Spain do for us? BY NICK SNELLING One of the curiosities of Spain is the seeming denial by the Spanish of the past existence of the Moors in their country. Certainly, much is made of the ‘heroic’ Christian Reconquista, but rarely is the Moorish invasion of Spain looked upon as having provided any intrinsic benefit.  In fact, apart from a few scintillating buildings, such as the Alhambra and the Cordoba Mezquita, it would be easy to imagine that, during their 780 years presence, the Moors in Spain contributed nothing of consequence to the country. In fact, the Moors had a profound influence not just upon Spain but the whole of Western Europe.  Indeed, it has been said that they laid the foundations of the Renaissance that brought Europe out of the intellectual and physical gloom of the Middle Ages. In the 10th Century Cordoba, for…

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The Borgias, either Caesar or nothing! Wrapped in a carpet, the horribly bloated and badly decomposing body of Pope Alexander VI was pummelled and pushed unceremoniously into a hastily made and too small coffin.  No priests attended his burial nor were there wax tapers, lights, solemn masses or chanting monks.  It was August 1503 at the Vatican and the Spanish Borgia’s iron grip on power was unravelling fast.  With Alexandar VI dead, the Borgias had, in all senses of the word, lost their ‘Godfather’, Back in the Vatican, Alexander VI’s private chambers had already been pillaged, so that all that remained were a few hangings and cushions.  Meanwhile, the Pope’s son, the ruthless and terrifying Cesare Borgia, was desperately trying to secure his position, despite barely recovering from the illness that had killed his father.  As Captain General of the church, he had already taken possession of his father’s treasures…

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