Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano Page A

her with sticks and stones. At that point she had no choice: she ordered the sacred books of Mohammed burned in the central square of the conquered city, and she expelled the infidels who persisted in their false religion and insisted on speaking Arabic.
    Other expulsion decrees, signed by other monarchs, completed the purge. Spain sent into everlasting exile her children of befouled blood, Jews and Muslims, and thus emptied herself of her finest artisans, artists, and scientists, of her most advanced farmers, and of her most experienced bankers and merchants. In exchange, Spain multiplied her beggars and her warriors, her parasitic nobles, and her fanatical monks, all of untainted Christian blood.
    Isabella, born on Holy Thursday and a devotee of Our Lady of Anguishes, founded the Spanish Inquisition and named as her confessor the celebrated Supreme Inquisitor, Torquemada.
    Her last will and testament, inflamed with mystical ardor, emphasized defending the purity of the faith and the purity of the race. Of the kings to come she begged and commanded them “never to cease fighting for the faith against the infidels and always to give great favor to matters of the Holy Inquisition.”

THE AGES OF JUANA LA LOCA

    At the age of sixteen, she marries a Flemish prince. Her parents, the Catholic Monarchs, marry her off to a man she has never met.
    At eighteen, she discovers the bath. An Arab maiden shows her the delights of water. Juana, thrilled, bathes every day. A shocked Queen Isabella comments: “My daughter is abnormal.”
    At twenty-three, she tries to regain her children, who for reasons of state she rarely sees. “My daughter has lost her marbles,” remarks her father, King Ferdinand.
    At twenty-four, on a trip to Flanders, her ship sinks. Unflappable, she demands her food be served. Her husband, stuffed into an enormous lifesaver and kicking wildly in fear, screams, “You’re crazy!”
    At twenty-five, scissors in hand, she hovers over several ladies of the court suspected of marital infidelity, and clips their curls.
    At twenty-six, she is a widow. Her husband, recently proclaimed king, drank a glass of ice-cold water. She suspects it was poisoned. She sheds not a tear, but from then on dresses perpetually in black.
    At twenty-seven, she spends her days seated on the throne in Castile, staring into space. She refuses to put her signature to laws, letters, or anything else they place before her.
    At twenty-nine, her father declares her insane and locks her up in a castle on the banks of the Duero River. Catalina, the youngest of her daughters, stays with her. The girl grows up in the cell next door, and from her window watches other children play.
    At thirty-six, she is alone. Her son Charles, soon to become emperor, has taken Catalina away. She refuses to eat until they bring her daughter back. They tie her up, beat her, oblige her to eat. Catalina does not return.
    At seventy-six, after nearly half a century of prison life, the queen who never reigned dies. For a long time she has been immobile, gazing at nothing.

CHARLES

    The son of Juana la Loca was a king of seventeen crowns, inherited, conquered, or bought.
    In 1519, in Frankfurt, having convinced the electors of the Holy Roman Empire with two tons of gold, he became emperor of all Europe.
    This persuasive argument was lent to him by bankers: the Germans Fugger and Welser, the Genovese Fornari and Vivaldo, and the Florentine Gualterotti.
    Charles was nineteen years old and already a prisoner of the bankers.
    He reigned in reins.

LEGACY DENIED

    One night in Madrid I asked a taxi driver:
    “What did the Moors bring to Spain?”
    “Trouble,” he answered without a trace of hesitation or doubt.
    The Moors were Islamic Spaniards who called Spain home for eight centuries, thirty-two generations, and whose culture shone there as nowhere else.
    Many Spaniards know nothing of the light still glowing from those lamps. The Muslim legacy includes:
    religious