Black Legend

See also: black legend

English

Alternative forms

• black legend

Etymology

Calque of Spanish Leyenda Negra (literally “Black Legend”).

Proper noun

the Black Legend

1. (historiography) The depiction of Spain and Spaniards (or, by extension, all Hispanics and their countries of origin) as bloodthirsty and cruel, greedy and fanatical, especially concerning the colonial period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.
   • 1964, Jan Morris, “Wild Spain”, in Spain, Faber and Faber, published 2008, →ISBN:

     […] if the black legend seemed to be fading at last, the horrors of the Civil War revived it with a vengeance. Never was a conflict fought more bitterly.

   • 1992, Edwin Williamson, The Penguin history of Latin America, London, New York: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 84:

     Here the problem is aggravated by the mutually reinforcing influences of the ‘black legend’ of Spanish greed and cruelty, and the contrasting myth of the American Indian as ‘noble savage’.

Translations

the depiction of Spain as cruel, greedy and fanatical

• Dutch: Zwarte Legende f
• Finnish: musta legenda
• French: Légende Noire f
• Polish: Czarna Legenda hiszpanii f
• Portuguese: Lenda Negra f
• Spanish: Leyenda Negra f
• Swedish: svarta legenden

See also

• White Legend