by The Rock
The Count of Arcos was as angry as his son, but he decided to accept the situation, and he and all the other contestants marched away, leaving the duke to gloat over his prize. He did not gloat for long ... but before turning to that story it should be recorded that Alonzo Arcos, the alcalde, later became deputy governor of Seville, where he died in 1477. Ah el Curro was baptized, became Diego del Curro, and, unlike Benedict Arnold, lived happily ever after in the esteem of the people for whom he had betrayed his own.
Spain was about to enter its period of greatness, but before that could happen, it had to come into existence. Spain was a geographical entity, but politically it consisted at this time of three kingdoms: Navarre, Aragon, and Castile. In 1465 King Enrique IV of Castile's son, the Infante Alonzo, was set up as a puppet king by some rebellious barons. Fortunately for the kingdom, the prince died in 1468. King Enrique's heir presumptive was now his young sister, Isabella, and he arranged a dynastic marriage for her with Ferdinand, son of the King of Aragon. In 1474 he himself died, and Isabella became Queen of Castile. In 1479 the King of Aragon died, the crowns were united, and Ferdinand and Isabella ruled jointly over a new country—Spain. (Navarre, much smaller, was incorporated thirty-seven years later.)
Four events now took place which cast the mold of Spanish life for centuries to come and affected every inhabitant of the world. All started or were based in Andalusia. Gibraltar was closely affected by all four.
First in time was the setting up of the Spanish Inquisition. Queen Isabella was a considerable statesman except in the area of religion; here she was a maniac. The barons found her a strong ruler, but she was little better than putty in the hands of the fanatic priests with whom she surrounded herself. The Inquisition was founded in Christian jealousy of the power and wealth attained by families converted from Judaism—mostly in fear of the pogroms of a century earlier. These New Christians, or marranos, had become bishops, councilors, knights: for example, the Grand Master of the Order of Santiago was descended on both sides from the Jew Ruy Capon. In Aragon within a brief period the Master of the Royal Household, the treasurer, several assessors, the Chief Justice, and the president of the Cortes (advisory parliament) were all marranos. Marranos, or conversos, as they were also called, held a monopoly of the banking and medical professions. They constituted almost the whole of the small Spanish middle class.
Many conversos were devout Christians, but some secretly held their Jewish faith. On November 1, 1478, the Inquisition was founded, by order of Pope Sixtus IV at the request of Queen Isabella, to root out these false Christians. The first commissioners of the Inquisition gathered in Seville on Christmas Day, 1480, and on February 6, 1481, in that city, burned several marranos who had been surprised secretly celebrating Passover the year before. These were the first victims of an institution which blackened the name of Spain abroad and held the national intelligence in chains of fear until 1834.
If there were Christians in Gibraltar, there were certainly marranos, too, and although the Inquisition never held its inquiries in small towns, it is reasonable to suppose that some of Gibraltar's conversos were denounced by jealous rivals and dragged off to suffer for what they may or may not have secretly believed in.
From the moment the Inquisition was founded, the Church had seen the fatal flaw of such action against heretics: it could not be used against avowed Jews. But there were savage penal laws and exclusions against Jews to hand, such as those of 1412, and the Church now moved to strengthen and enforce these, with the purpose of driving the Jews out of Spain. In April, 1481, Jews were ordered to be confined to their ghettos. In 1482 and 1483 Jews were expelled from most of Andalusia and three years later from most of Aragon.
Now came the second great event, the fall of Granada, the last Muslim outpost left in Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella, los Reyes Catolicos as they are usually known in Spain, encamped themselves before Granada early in 1490 and after various skirmishes and mishaps succeeded in bringing the King of Granada to sign terms of capitulation. These terms were wise and liberal and specifically stated that the Moors were to be regarded as free subjects of the Crown, with the free exercise of their religion. On January 2, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella entered Granada. The reconquest, begun 774 years earlier in the remote Asturian gorge of Covadonga, was over.
Two Jews, Isaac Abarbanel and Abraham Senior, had provided the Reyes Catdlicos with most of the money they needed for the long campaign, and the monarchs demurred—just a little—when the Church suggested that now was the time to press on with the unification of Spain by expelling the rest of the Jews. Hernando de Talavera, once the queen's confessor and now the newly appointed Archbishop of Granada, soon cut off those qualms by storming into the royal presence, casting down thirty pieces of silver, and crying that they were betraying Orrist's chinch for money, even as Judas had betrayed Christ. The Reyes Catolicos quickly ordered the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, signing the edict in Granada on March 31, 1492. It gave the Jews four months to sell up what they could and leave.
This cruel and foolish order—the third great event—lost to Spain nearly all that was left of her professional skills, learning, and independence of spirit and thought. So on July 31, 1492, being the ninth day of Ab (the destruction of both the first and second Temples of Jerusalem took place on this date) the last Sephardim left Spain, many from Gibraltar. The total of exiles numbered over a quarter of a million. They left behind their houses, libraries, and lands but they took with them their keys (thinking that the order must soon be rescinded), such belongings as they could carry, the Ladino tongue, and a great love of a country where Jewish culture had reached its finest flower—now apparently gone mad. Many of these Jews went to Portugal and thence to Holland and England. Others went to Leghorn, Genoa, Minorca, and all parts of Barbary. Still others went as far as Constantinople, where the sultan welcomed them with pleasure, expressing his thanks to the generous sovereigns of Spain for sending him their most talented and industrious subjects.
So Judah Conquy would have had to leave Gibraltar thirty years after he had helped take it; and perhaps he would have gone with Tova and their family to Tangier, where, by climbing the hill above the old town, he could easily see the Rock on most days.
In Spain the campaign for "unification" went on. Keeping more or less to the terms of the capitulation, Hernando de Talavera set about converting the Moors to Christianity by argument and reasoning. He was having some success when Ferdinand and Isabella invited another prelate, Cardinal Ximenez, to speed up the pace. A campaign of coercion began, in direct contravention of the terms of the capitulation. A small and quite natural rising against this treatment, in 1499, was taken as an excuse to declare that the capitulation itself was no longer valid. All Moors were ordered to be baptized or leave the country. Since every obstacle was thrown in the way of their departure, most were baptized. And now the Inquisition and the greedy, bigoted aristocracy of Castile whose economic weapon it was looked hungrily at these Moriscos and began to plan how to drive them too out of Spain, making sure that they too must leave most of their wealth behind.
The fourth event, incomparably the most important, was the expedition of a Genoese sailor, probably of Catalan converso origin, financed by Queen Isabella (and by certain Aragonese conversos) to discover a new route to the Indies. Christopher Columbus discovered or rediscovered America on October 12, 1492, with incalculable results for mankind. The immediate outcome, for Spain, was to provide the nation with a new outlet for its energy to replace the reconquest. Ferdinand and Isabella's grandson, Charles V, King and Emperor, put the Pillars of Hercules onto his coat of arms, but from the demigod's original legend non plus ultra ("nothing beyond") he removed the first word; the new motto can be freely interpreted either as "Go west, young man," or "The sky's the limit." One of the first people to go and find out what really was "out there" was Don Rodrigo Ponce de Leon's son, Don Juan, the one who searched all over Florida (of all places) for the fountains of youth.
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bsp; Against this background the intimate history of Spanish Gibraltar takes on a sharper focus. King Enrique was overjoyed when he heard of its fall. He at once added "King of Gibraltar" to his other titles and by a royal order transferred to the jurisdiction of Gibraltar all territories that had previously been under Algeciras. As Algeciras had not existed for a century, these territories had been quietly appropriated by neighboring towns, and the king's order was not popular with them. The king also ordered the Duke of Medina Sidonia to give up possession to his own appointed governor, Pedro de Porras. Either because the king was at the time strong or because he himself was weak, the duke unwillingly obeyed. Two years later the king visited Gibraltar in person and invited the King of Portugal (who was visiting Ceuta, across the strait) to join him there. The two sovereigns spent eight days together in Gibraltar, talking politics and hunting in the forests of Almoraima on the mainland.
Soon rebellious barons and grandees broke into revolt all over Spain, and the Infante Alonzo was set up as king, rival to his father. The Duke seized his chance, forced the pretender, then aged eleven, to acknowledge his right to Gibraltar, and in March, 1466, demanded of the new governor, Esteban de Villacreces, that he give up the place at once. Villacreces refused, and the Ninth Siege began. The defense was long and heroic, but no help came from the king, who was fully engaged elsewhere, and on July 26, 1467, starvation and weakness forced Villacreces to surrender. The duke, a vengeful man, imprisoned him with many threats of worse to follow.
Next year the duke died, to be succeeded by his legitimized son, Enrique de Guzman, as Fourth Count of Niebla and Second Duke of Medina Sidonia. This young man, then twenty-six, was able to force the harassed king into a definite cession of Gibraltar, but—and this is most interesting, as a comparable situation holds today—the king retained sovereignty. The actual words of the grant, which is dated January 3, 1469, are "reservando en mi ... e para los reyes que despues de mi fueren en estos dichos reyros, el soberano sefiorio ... ("reserving for myself ... and for the kings who shall succeed me in these said kingdoms, the sovereign dominion...")
The duke incorporated Gibraltar into the rest of his extensive domains and gave it a constitution more liberal than most, though not as privileged as the extraordinary charter of 1310. The inhabitants shared in the increase in the duke's prosperity, caused by the removal of Gibraltar's Moorish pirates and poachers. Many probably worked in his timber, cooperage, and tunny-processing monopolies. In 1477 they saw the last flurry of Moorish warlike activity when King Muley Hassan of Granada, raiding into Christian territory, was brought to battle in the forests of Almoraima, below Castellar, by two doughty warriors, Vargas of Gibraltar and Vera of Jimena. These two cordially hated each other—Vargas was the duke's man, Vera the king's; and Vera had seized Vargas and thrown him into prison when the latter was on his way to take over the governorship of Gibraltar for the duke—but they sank their differences to smite the common enemy.
The next year, 1478, the duke had himself named Marquis of Gibraltar and was also able to compel the recently enthroned Ferdinand and Isabella to confirm him in all his rights and titles, including the ownership of Gibraltar. But the times were changing, as the Reyes Catolicos gained a firmer grip on their unified country. In the next two years they severely curtailed the power of the grandees and had several castles of the Guzman and Ponce de Leon families dismantled.
Duke Enrique died in 1492, having performed valiantly in the fall of Granada. He was succeeded by Duke Juan, who went, as was customary, to the sovereign and asked for an affirmation of his rights and titles. Ferdinand and Isabella refused to give it unless he surrendered Gibraltar to them. In vain the duke protested that they themselves had specifically affirmed these rights fourteen years earlier. Ferdinand and Isabella were adamant: Isabella had a feeling for Gibraltar as strong as Mary of England's for Calais. The days of huge independent baronies were over: the duke must give up Gibraltar. After sulking for several years, he realized that times had indeed changed and yielded. On the last day of 1501 Garcilaso de la Vega arrived to govern Gibraltar for Ferdinand and Isabella. The first thing he did, being a proper civil servant, was take an inventory. Copies are still extant. It is an amusing document, starting with the second count's sarcophagus (the one that had hung from the tower) and ending with detailed lists of arquebuses (without stocks) and pikes (three with broken points).
In 1504 Isabella died and in her testament stated that Gibraltar must never again be alienated from the Spanish Crown. But the Guzmans didn't give up easily, and in the period of confusion between her death and Ferdinand's, in 1516, the duke tried to get Gibraltar back, blockading it for four months (the Tenth Siege). It did not surrender, and under Charles V the Spanish monarchy and people stepped into their glory years.
For Gibraltar itself, the end of the reconquest meant a temporary end to its importance. In 1535, when Alvaro de Bazan arrived to take over the governorship, he found the town almost empty and the fortress abandoned. He managed to attract some citizens back, only to have them killed, looted, and pillaged in an attack by the Moorish corsair Barbarossa. Barbarossa was informed and guided by an Italian renegade, Caramanli... who had once been a slave of Bazan's! The raiders were caught by a Spanish admiral as they sailed away and dispersed in a sea fight. Caramanli was killed by an arrow in the chest and two arquebus shots at close range.
This occurred in 1540, but—showing how little real value was now placed on Gibraltar—Charles V did nothing until 1552, when he appointed a Milanese engineer called Calvi to design and build new defenses. The only part of these remaining or, perhaps, ever constructed is Charles V's Wall, the high wall which marks the southern limit of Gibraltar's built-up area, and which climbs from sea level to the cliff line seven hundred feet higher. Above the cliff it continues to the crest in a series of long angles rather farther to the south.
In 1556 Charles, King of Spain, Holy Roman Emperor, the most powerful ruler the world had yet seen, abdicated to a monk's cell in Yuste. Philip II succeeded him and continued his father's policy of neglecting Gibraltar, whose few inhabitants were left at the mercy of the Barbary pirates. The Invincible Armada which Philip launched against England in 1588 had two odd connections with Gibraltar. The admiral he appointed to command it was the aging but most capable and experienced Alvaro de Bazan; but he died before he could embark, and in his place the king appointed a proud, stupid grandee, a soldier with no experience of the sea—Alonso de Guzman, Seventh Duke of Medina Sidonia and Sixth Marquis of Gibraltar.
The years pass.... An autumn storm in Gibraltar Bay sinks a warship preparing to escort the galleons to America.... A king completes the evil work of the Reyes Catolicos by expelling all the Moriscos (descendants of Moors forcibly converted to Christianity) from Spain; there are more than a million of them. Many concentrate in and sail from Gibraltar, as many Jews had done 120 years earlier.... The same king builds watch towers all along his southern coast, one actually on the Rock (on what was then called Tarfes Altos and now Windmill Hill Flats)—this tower rather mysteriously becomes known as the Genoese Tower—and another at the foot of the north face, on the isthmus—this one is called the Devil's Tower.
... Another king visits Gibraltar but has to walk in because his carriage won't go through the gate. His courtiers upbraid the governor, who replies coldly that the gate was not made to let carriages in but to keep enemies out.... A terrible pestilence attacks the town (it is the same Great Plague which struck London in 1665).... There is a lack of oil and wheat, though a surplus of fish; and it is ordained that no ship will be allowed to load fish for export unless it has brought in a cargo of wheat or oil.... There is a steady, slow recovery from the years of neglect, and a new large mole is built, thrusting out from the western shore beyond the old southern limit of the town.
While Gibraltar thought about its fisheries and King Philip IV about the gold mines of Peru, some northern islanders were thinking about Gibraltar. In 1625 a Colonel Henry Bruce—apparently wi
th no particular emergency in mind—presented a plan for the seizure of Gibraltar to Charles, Prince of Wales. Charles did nothing, and in 1649 (the year of the Gibraltar plague) lost his head on the block as King Charles I. His successor, Cromwell, was a military genius and on April 28, 1656, wrote to Admiral Montague on the advantages to England and the disadvantages that could be imposed on Spain if England were to gain possession of Gibraltar. The matter was further discussed and investigated, but Cromwell never took any action. His successor, Charles II of England, married a Portuguese princess, who brought him Tangier as part of her dowry. Tangier was not as easy to defend as Gibraltar, but it did give England a naval outpost at the mouth of the Mediterranean, threateningly close to Spain, and so met some of the needs which had made Cromwell think of the Rock. But in 1684 England abandoned Tangier, which reverted to the Moroccan Empire.
Spain's two centuries as the most powerful nation in the world were coming to an end. Its king, Carlos II, was a sick man with no direct heirs. France was rising fast under the unscrupulous and ambitious Louis XIV. England, recovered from its civil wars, only awaited a favorable wind to spread its sails. None of this might have directly affected Gibraltar except for the chance of a sea fight off Cape St. Vincent in 1693. The English admiral, Sir George Rooke, was severely handled by a French squadron (one of the century's small, purposeless wars was in progress). Spain happened to be allied with England in that war, and Rooke sailed his battered ships through the strait and took shelter under the Rock. The Spanish only had a few guns mounted, but they fired on the French, who veered off. Rooke was able to stay ten days, rest, and refit. The circumstance made a deep impression on him.
