THE CAPITULATION OF GRANADA
An analysis of Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz's painting in its historical context.
On January 2, 1492, the longest war in history ended. On that day, the Sultan Boabdil of Granada surrendered the keys of the Alhambra palace to the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, thus ending ten years of war between Granada and Castile/Aragon and 780 years of Muslim presence on Iberia. This event unified Spain as a nation under one crown and one faith, and was responsible in a large part for the successes that would follow Spain’s course for the next hundred years militarily, economically and politically, and is commemorated in a famous painting by Francisco Pradilla Ortiz first unveiled in the 1880s.
Or at least that is one way to see the events of early 1492. The problem is that subsequent history remembers the Catholic Monarchs’ victory for many different reasons; as a symbol of unity, as a tragedy for civilization, as the climax of the reign of the Catholic Monarchs. The further problem for a historian trying for a comprehensive approach is that all these ideas are of worth. On so many levels this was a great triumph for the Catholic Monarchs, who had accomplished their personal goal of uniting Spain in their person under one crown and one faith. This was a triumph for Castile as well, for at last they were free of marauding Moors AND gained richly in prestige in the eyes of Europe. But was it truly a victory for a united Spain as a whole entity? And what about for Christendom, the geopolitical entity that encompasses all nations and peoples trying to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth? The 1882 painting by Pradilla Ortiz would have us believe so. But history is complicated, and even the painting itself can show these complications.
Part I: Visual Analysis
When someone comes to the painting’s home at the Capilla Real in Granada, what does he see? The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and the clouds are white and fluffy…overall a perfect spring day in southern Spain. In the distance Granada is clustered darkly at the base of a hill, and at the top of said hill the Alhambra Palace glistens with a tan sheen in the sun. But our attention is drawn first to the Catholic Spaniards’ party, on the right side of the painting. Save for one knight in armor and a cluster of lances in the back of the group, this is not the image of a group of soldiers, more a country gathering. The Queen of Castile, Isabella, is the dominant figure, glistening in white and blue robes astride a restive white charger and flanked by maids of honor. On her right hand the King of Aragon and Sicily, Ferdinand, sits on a calm brown stallion bedecked in armor and heraldry, with banners at his back, although the king himself is unequipped for war. Across from the Christian Spaniards are the beaten Moors, all girded up for war—a war, by the way, that they have just lost. Heads are bowed, no banners and colors are shown; defeat is palpable. On a black horse Muhammad al-Abdul, Boabdil, extends the keys of the Alhambra to the Catholic monarchs, and Ferdinand is ready to receive them. Around both Christians and Moors the land is barren and the trees are dead; although the sky is perfect, the land is still in the grip of winter and is not yet recovered from war.
So what do we have here? Spain is triumphant against its enemies, that much is clear. Isabella, Ferdinand and their people are by and large not dressed for war, yet they are the dominant figures, the victors over the militaristic but beaten Moors. Front and center is a herald wearing a tabard with the united arms of Castile and Aragon; a united Spain has won this victory, not the individual kingdoms as had been the case throughout the 770 years of warfare that had come before this day. Another interesting thing to notice is what is not on the painting. Isabella saw the Granada War as a crusade, waged as much for the glorification of God and His church as for the glorification of Spain; yet from the painting one would not really notice that. There is only one small cross in the midst of the banners and lances, to show what creed the conquerors professed; and the Moors, not displaying any crescents, are not afforded such a luxury.
Part II: Different Viewpoints
There are many who see the painting, and the event it depicts, as the high point of Spanish unity. It is not hard to see why. Before Ferdinand and Isabella assumed the thrones of Castile and Aragon, Hispania had been riven by war and strife. There were kings on both thrones, but no unity even within the petty kingdoms; for three kings before Isabella the great lords of Castile had run the country to suit their own purposes, and the kingdom had suffered for it. Before Isabella married Ferdinand Castile and Aragon had been at cross purposes for several years, with each king using every nasty trick in the book to humiliate, discomfit, or badly damage his counterpart. All that was very much past history by the time Granada fell in 1492. Castilian and Aragonese blood had supposedly been shed side by side; the king of Aragon had lead the armies in the field while the queen of Castile directed the war effort from behind the lines, in the fashion of a modern commander in chief.
But Ferdinand and Isabella did not truly rule one united kingdom, only what could be described as a “coalition of the willing.” Castile more or less became the face of this personal union, for it was larger and wealthier than Aragon, and thanks to the charisma of Queen Isabella it more or less followed the dictates of the crown without question. Aragon was another matter entirely. With its tradition of feudal independence and local rights, it presented a constant headache for Ferdinand as he tried to lead his kingdom in a united purpose. For both realms, moreover, local rights and privileges that the nobility and church had acquired over the years had to constantly be taken into account whenever Ferdinand and Isabella were trying to formulate policy. The tradition of the Reconquest, which for the first few hundred years had been carried out by the great nobles on their own without royal command, was at once a source of unity and a source of fragmentation. The Christians of Iberia were united against a common enemy, but until Ferdinand and Isabella they had no common goal; old habits die hard. And during the ten year campaign, Ferdinand in particular was not always ready to stay the course; at one point he wanted a truce with Granada so he and his kingdom could take advantage of a moment of French weakness. This was truly Castile’s and Isabella’s war, and it could be argued that Ferdinand was only along for the ride.
Part III: Historical Background
It is one of the oddities of Spanish history that it has never, ever known true political unity from within; up until about 1700 any unity had been imposed from the outside. The first to try were the Romans, who began fighting along the coast of Iberia as part of their long war with Carthage. After the Carthaginians were beaten, the Romans set out to secure their flank and spread their influence into the hinterland; after a long and harsh war that lasted, off and on, for a good 200 years, the Romans finally secured all of Iberia in the time of Augustus Caesar. When in the Fifth Century AD the Roman Empire collapsed under exterior attack and internal corruption, Visigothic tribes swept into Iberia and made it their kingdom. For 300 years they lived and ruled over a realm that incorporated many of the same laws, same boundaries, and same legal customs as Roman Hispania. But in the 770s that kingdom collapsed more violently than the province it had replaced when Muslim Berbers lead by Arab generals swept across the Straits of Gibraltar, killed the Visigothic King in battle, and overran almost the entire peninsula except for the barren north coast. For a second time unity had been imposed from without by foreigners, and for about 200 years that unity persevered in the south of Spain. But in the north, in the face of the invaders Christian resistance took on a surprisingly disunited and fragmentary character; and even in the south, as the Muslims became more Spanish than Arab, their political unity fragmented as well, to be restored only briefly on the two occasions that fanatics from Africa swept across the sea to take the fight to the Christians. In 1492, the Muslim political presence in Spain was ended at last when Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand accepted the surrender of Granada.
It would take many more decades and much political upheaval before Spain could even approximate the political unity people believe the Catholic Monarchs achieved. The fact that for two monarchies Spain was ruled by foreigners crucially endangered the trust that Spaniards had recently acquired for their king; they didn’t like Philip the Handsome at all, and for many years saw Charles I as a usurper who spent too much time away from Spain and was under the thumb of his German and Flemish advisors. Not until Philip II took the throne following his father’s abdication did the Spanish kingdoms and people come together as nation in practice, although in theory the King of Spain was only king of several constituent kingdoms. And even in practice Spanish foreign policy was more exclusively Castilian, and as the decades went on less and less purely Catholic. By the 1650s Catholic Spain was increasingly allying with Protestant nations in the dynastic wars that ravaged Europe, as Spanish arms were fairly routinely defeated, Spanish gold was debased, and Spanish royalty the laughingstock of Europe. In 1715 after a long dynastic war, the French Bourbon prince Philippe, Duke of Anjou became King. As a way of punishing those in Spain (primarily in Aragon and Cataluña) who had fought for the Austrian Habsburg Archduke Charles, his rival, he targeted their ancient liberties as kingdoms and their special privileges as nobles, in a sense forging a united Spain in the process of dealing retribution to his enemies. This pushed Spain back up into the league of great powers, but at the cost of ensuring that whole regions hated the Crown with a passion. The entire history of Spain from about 1815 to the 1920s is the story of disgruntled factions in the peripheries trying, by armed struggle or political campaign, to reassert their ancient privileges. The most persistent were the Carlists, a faction that backed a different candidate for the throne than the current claimants on the basis of their champion’s more sterling Catholic and Traditionalist credentials and their abiding by Salic law. From about 1830 to the 1870s, there were three separate rebellions by the Carlists against the Central government of Madrid which had varying degrees of success; the Third Carlist War saw Carlist armies secure a strong foothold in the Spanish heartland, far from their powerbase in Navarra. When the central government finally defeated the Carlists, as part of the postwar reconstruction it produced a new constitution that was essentially a hodgepodge of various policies both sides were in favor of; a strong King with more power than the Cortes, Catholicism as the state religion, regulation of individual (not regional; these did not exist) rights, no regional autonomy, and others like these.
Part IV: The Master and His Purpose
Which brings us to the painter, Francisco Pradilla Ortiz. Not much is known about him as a person; he was born near Zaragoza in 1848 and died in 1921. What is known is his artwork. He was a specialist in the kind of painting called the Costumbrismo, a uniquely Spanish form of landscape art that depicts the lives of everyday Spaniards. He is credited with over a thousand of these, but is more renowned to the rest of the world as a painter of vast historical works, of which The Capitulation of Granada is the most famous but not the first. In 1878 he unveiled his first masterpiece, a painting depicting Juana “la Loca” and the casket of her husband Philip I; a morbid episode of Spanish history that still won him the Medal of Honor for his execution of it. Soon after he was specially commissioned by the Spanish Senate in 1880 to create The Capitulation of Granada; it was no easy feat, taking two years. He continued painting until almost the very end; one of his last works depicts the baptism of Isabella and Ferdinand’s son Juan, and was unveiled in 1919; he died two years later.
A look at the political situation in Spain at this time could show us why some choices were made in the execution of the painting. This painting was commissioned by the Spanish Senate in 1882. The Third Carlist War, which had posed such a threat to the Crown and government of Spain, had ended a scant five years before. As part of the post-war settlement the aforementioned Constitution of 1876 had been promulgated. The Spain the Constitution envisioned was united and cohesive by choice, Catholic by necessity to maintain the peace. Unity and state power were the most important ideals of the Spanish State. This is reflected in The Capitulation of Granada, with its colorful depiction of the might of the Spanish crown that is mostly absent of religion or diversity.
Conclusion
Every nation tries to a certain extent to manipulate its history to reflect the ideology of those currently in power. Spain is no different; what makes it so special is the history that the rulers manipulate, which is not quite like the story of every other nation. Every era has either a figure or event to be manipulated or somebody ready and willing to manipulate. The legendary knight El Cid of the 11th Century was warped from his actual identity as the strongest of many strong men who fought primarily for themselves into some Catholic Spanish hero that might have surprised him, thanks to Spanish literary figures of the 1920s. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, is remembered as the man who brought Spain power and glory on a great scale, whereas Spaniards in his own age saw him, at least initially, as an interloper who had no right to be king and was under the thumb of vested Burgundian and German interests. Thus is the case with the event of the Fall of Granada, which thanks in large part to Francisco Pradilla Ortiz’s gorgeous painting is today remembered as being something it might not have been.
Nevertheless, the event itself is still a major milestone in not only the history of Spain, but the history of the world itself. Such an event needs no false trappings to have its natural glory, and hopefully scholars will continue to peel away the trappings and let the Reconquista shine in its own glory. And as this scene from a 2012 Spanish TV show about the life of Queen Isabella beautifully shows, even a Spain that is different in so many ways from hers remembers this day with pride.
Bibliography
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Carroll, Warren H. Isabel of Spain, the Catholic Queen. Front Royal, Virginia: Christendom Press, 1991.
Downey, Kirsten. Isabella, the Warrior Queen. New York: Nan A. Talise/Doubleday, 2014.
Elliot, J. H. Imperial Spain, 1469-1716. London, Penguin Books, 2002
Miller, Townshend. The Castles and the Crown: Spain 1451-1555. New York: Howard-McCann, 1963.
Vincent, Mary. Spain, People and State (1833-2003). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.