Two days after October 12, Spain’s National Day and the Day of Hispanidad, the European Parliament has hosted an event dedicated to reclaiming the shared historical legacy of Spain and Hispanic America and challenging interpretations of that past shaped by the Black Legend. The panel was organised by Spanish MEP Nora Junco, of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group.
Spanish writer Juan Manuel de Prada, Mexican historian Juan Miguel Zunzunegui and Peruvian intellectual commentator Rafael Aita agreed in presenting Hispanidad as a civilisation built on both sides of the Atlantic, with racial and cultural mixing, the Spanish language and Christianity serving as its main unifying elements.
The discussion also took on a distinctly European dimension. All three speakers questioned the continent’s gradual abandonment of its Christian roots and the consequences they believe this rupture has had for Western societies. What was once known as “Christendom”, they said, is now “a civilisation in the process of disappearing”.
De Prada argued that the Black Legend cannot be explained solely as propaganda spread by Spain’s rival powers. According to the writer, that hostility had an underlying religious dimension linked to the role of the Spanish monarchy as a defender of Catholicism against Protestantism and, later, liberal thought.
He extended this argument to the European Union, recalling that its founders shared a Christian cultural foundation which, he argued, has progressively disappeared from its institutions.
“From the moment God was removed, the European Union began turning into something else,” he said.
De Prada warned that European societies have lost many of the cultural and moral bonds that once held them together. He clarified that recovering this foundation does not mean imposing religion, but rather recognising the Christian roots of European civilisation.
“Civilisations are founded by religions, and they disappear with the religion that founded them,” he maintained.
He also rejected the idea that challenging the Black Legend should involve constructing a “Pink Legend” that denies the abuses committed during the Spanish presence in the Americas. His argument was that the Spanish Crown defended laws and institutions intended to prosecute such abuses, a dimension he believes is largely absent from contemporary historical narratives.