This position was hailed by RamГіn MenГ©ndez Pidal in his El Padre Las Casas, su doble personalidad (1963), a curious work that went on, somewhat inconsistently, to accuse Las Casas of paranoia.

Though the works of Las Casas were misused by Spain's enemies, his career in itself was a partial refutation of the Black Legend. Only Spain had attempted to place its conquests on a moral footing. Hanke contended that the efforts of Las Casas and the legislation that resulted from them were unique in the history of colonizing powers. The publication of Lewis Hanke's The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (1949) opened a North American debate over the Black Legend and placed Las Casas squarely at its center. Like JuderГas, Carbia was primarily interested in defending the Spanish record. In Carbia's view, Las Casas had exaggerated the brutality of the Conquest in an effort to secure improved treatment for the Indians, and in so doing he had provided Spain's political and religious enemies with a rich source of propaganda. In 1944 the Argentine scholar RГіmulo Carbia applied the concept to the historical treatment of the Spanish conquest of America and linked the Black Legend specifically to the work of BartolomГ© de Las Casas, whose BrevГsima RelaciГіn de la destrucciГіn de las Indias had been widely circulated in translation since the sixteenth century. His book, which was extremely popular in Spain, is basically a defense of Spanish accomplishments. The author of revisionist works on a variety of topics, JuderГas was convinced that Spain and its culture had been systematically vilified by foreign authors who were inspired by Protestantism or the Enlightenment. The term was apparently coined by JuliГЎn JuderГas in his book La Leyenda negra y la verdad histГіrica (1914).

The national stereotype derived from this literature portrays the Spanish as uniquely cruel, bigoted, lazy, and ignorant. The Black Legend, a body of traditional literature hostile to Spain, its people, and its culture.

The spanish black legend