In Far-off Spain

The Latin heritage of Texas runs deeper than its Lone Star roots, longer than the royal road to Mexico City, and broader than the sea sailed by the first Europeans to the western hemisphere. Latin Texas traces its origin to a formative era in 15th century Spain when teen heirs in two neighboring kingdoms—Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile—wed in 1469 to become one the most influential royal couples in global history. Their ascent to respective thrones and unification of realms formed the foundation of the nation recognized today as Spain. Isabella and Ferdinand were heralded as the Reyes Católicos for the extreme zealotry in their acts to fortify Christianity as the dominant religion of the Iberian Peninsula.

Life in the era of the Catholic Monarchs mirrored Middle Ages settlements throughout Europe. The territories that came into their rule contrasted strongly with each other in religion and culture, and many of them created literal land buffers that citizens were expected to understand and respect. Economies in rural regions of the Iberian Peninsula molded themselves to its varied profiles of terrain and climate, and urban financial systems thrived on mercantile services. While local ordinances provided a backbone for lawful behavior, communities in regions of specialized trade conformed to best practices that were set by unions such as the Mesta, whose members raised sheep and livestock. Instruction for common conduct was also gleaned from clerical leaders and sacred practices. The Christian element of Spain’s population turned to the Catholic church for teachings and disciplines that complemented civil law. The seam between spiritual and secular direction was virtually invisible as long as community interests remained in harmony with the goals of the universal religion.

Aragon and Castile were far from alone among the territories of Middle Ages Spain. From the time of its conquest by Moors in 711 AD, the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula flourished as al-Andalus. Jewish families came to prominence alongside Muslim adherents in the development of a society acclaimed for its thriving financial and education systems. The prosperity of al-Andalus would grow to be regarded as a threat to the balance of power in the peninsula, with neighboring kingdoms expressing resistance through sharp religious conflicts. Catholic proponents of the Holy Inquisition focused particular contempt on Jews, presenting them with options to convert, flee, or be punished. Christian-ruled provinces labored over eight centuries to erode Moorish occupancy through a painstaking Reconquista of lost territories, cementing victories by constructing lines of frontera settlements.

From the outset of their monarchy, Isabella and Ferdinand acted boldly to reinforce their kingdom and reform its diverse society into a Christian empire. To resolve their alarm over the religious disrespect that they perceived among citizens, including doubts for the sincerity of Jewish conversions to Christianity, the rulers pressured the Church in Rome to permit the return of a controversial medieval institution. In 1478, Pope Sixtus IV authorized Ferdinand and Isabella to restore national piety through an ecclesiastical agenda that gained momentum as the Spanish Inquisition. Royal resistance to Moors also accelerated following an exchange of attacks between Christian and Muslim forces in southern Iberia. A campaign organized by Ferdinand in 1482 moved into the Emirate of Granada with the intent to dismantle the last Moorish stronghold in the peninsula and bring the long Reconquista to an end.

To the young monarchs, their lifetime goal to reinforce the kingdom might have seemed fulfilled when, in 1492, a Christian victory at Granada completed the reclamation of Spanish territory. However, an achievement for Ferdinand and Isabella later the same year would eclipse the realm of Spain and impact the entire Renaissance world. When Italian-born mariner Cristóbal Colón—Christopher Columbus, in Anglicized history—petitioned for funds to conduct a sea expedition of unusual range, the monarchs listened. If an oceanic path westward to a critical trade destination in Asia could be found, it would be superior to the arduous overland trek to the east. The rulers gambled that potential benefits of such a voyage outweighed the risks and spared Colón three vessels. The investment paid out: Colón’s return after having landed on distant tropical shores evidenced that a world did exist beyond the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean. Though his “discovery” was of an island in the modern Bahamas, the expedition has been understood since then as the pivotal initial encounter between the Old and New Worlds.

The most mystifying element in Colón’s report of the new world might have been its population. As it sunk into minds that the land he reached had not been Asia, the Catholic Monarchy sought to understand if the indigenous people would prove to be gente de razon—”people of reason.” It was a consideration that weighed heavily in royal objectives for returning to this strange world in the west. Religious devotees, as was Queen Isabella, visualized a land fertile for the introduction of Christianity. To pragmatic minds like King Ferdinand’s, New World territory presented an unusual opportunity to expand the Spanish empire. Moreover, it was rumored to flow with the precious metal that was esteemed more highly than all others in Europe, a commodity that could replenish the nation’s war-ravaged coffers: gold.

The rulers commissioned Colón to return to the tropical region. On settling the large island of Hispaniola in 1493 and fortifying Santo Domingo as its capital, the seas south of the Crown’s stronghold in Las Indias—the name by which the Spanish West Indies was known—became his new watery frontier. As Colón traversed the northern transcontinental coastline between Honduras and Venezuela, nations of Europe began waking to Spain’s investigation of the new hemisphere. In 1501, Portugal sponsored the coastal survey of South America by the seasoned mariner for which virtually the entire new hemisphere would be named, Amerigo Vespucci.

A grand geography opened rapidly before the eyes of rulers and explorers alike. The largest impediment for Old World administrators who began staking claim to New World land lay simply in measuring its vastness. Fifteen years after the Spanish landfall in Hispaniola, a series of rudimentary landfall incursions, like those of Juan de Esquivel to capture Jamaica and Alonzo de Hojeda into Venezuela, resulted in direct acquaintance and confrontations with native peoples. In 1510, the encounters extended into occupancy when the movement of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa into Colombia brought about the settlement of Dariéna, the first European town founded on the continental mainland. Explorations by Juan Ponce de Leon led first to Puerto Rico, then to the coastline and keys of La Florida—a broad region that Spain would later extend westward to surround most of the hemisphere’s largest gulf.

Over the next century, Florida would recede under the management of Spain to the size that it presently occupies. Another century yet would pass before magistrates of the Crown provided the financial resources, governance, and formal identity needed for the organization and settlement of the northwest gulf coast region. With this development, the new territory would function under its first Spanish provincial name of Tejas.

Featured image: “Iglesia San Pedro, Castilla y León province, Ávila de los Caballeros” by Håkan Svensson (Xauxa) via the Free Software Foundation, Avila San Pedro Vaults, cropped original, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Would you like to explore more of this topic?

Experts recommend …

	History Of The Reign Of Ferdinand And Isabella, The Catholic by William H. Prescott. This extensive 1837 publication on the lives of the Catholic Monarchs has been recognized for its watershed scholarship of Spain’s Old and New World legacy.
	Granada: A Pomegranate in the Hand of God by Steven Nightingale, Counterpoint, 2015. This walk through the vivid past of Granada contrasts the narrative of the 800-year Reconquista to end Moorish dominance in Spain, revealing a society whose splendor was scarred, but not erased by the campaign of the 15th century Catholic monarchs.
	The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World by Carlos Fuentes, Mariner Books, 1999. An examination of the forces of Iberian Peninsula history, along with those of pre-Columbian Mexico, that unfolded into the society of New Spain and, by extension, Texas.

Original sources …

	Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History edited by Jon Cowans, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. A selection of original documents that ground modern Spain in the dynamic reign of Ferdinand II and Isabella I, then trace the political conflicts with France that would impact relations on the far side of the world at the northeast border of Texas.
	The Four Voyages Of Christopher Columbus edited by John Michael Cohen, Penguin Books, 1969. Logs of the four voyages conducted by Columbus between 1492-1504 to the shores of Cuba, Haiti, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Trinidad, and the Central American mainland, cobbled from logbook entries, crew letters, and biographical material from his own son.