“The Renaissance,” continued Luna, “was more Spanish than Italian.  In Italy the literature of antiquity, and Greco-Roman art revived, but the Renaissance was not entirely literary.  The Renaissance represents the springing into life of a new and cultivated society, with arts and manufactures, armies and, scientific knowledge, etc.  And who accomplished this but Spain, that Arab-Hebrew-Christian Spain of the Catholic kings?  The Gran Capitan taught the world the art of modern warfare; Pedro Navarro was a wonderful engineer; the Spanish troops were the first to use firearms, and they created also the infantry, making war democratic, as it gave the people the superiority over the noble horsemen clad in armour; finally, it was Spain who discovered America.”

“And does all this seem little to you?” interrupted Don Antolin.  “Do you not exactly agree with what I said?  We have never seen so much power and greatness united in Spain as in the times of those kings, who with reason some call the Catholics.”

“I agree that it was a grand period of our history; the last that was really glorious, the last gleam that flashed before that Spain, who alone walked in the right way, was extinguished.  But before their deaths the Catholic kings commenced the decadence by dismembering that strong and healthy Spain of the Arabs, the Christians and the Jews.  You are right, Don Antolin, to say that those kings are not called the Catholics for nothing.  Dona Isabel with her feminine fanaticism established the Inquisition, so science extinguished her lamp in the mosques and synagogues, and hid her books in Christian convents.  Seeing that the hour for praying, instead of reading, had come, Spanish thought took refuge in darkness, trembling in cold and solitude, and ended by dying.  What remained devoted itself to poetry, to comedies and theological tracts.  Science became a pathway that led to the bonfire; and then came a fresh calamity, the expulsion of the Spanish Jews, so saturated with the spirit of this country, loving it so dearly, that even to-day, after four centuries, scattered on the shores of the Danube or the Bosphorus there are Spanish Jews who weep, like old Castillians, for their lost country: 

  ’Perdimos la bella Sion;
  Perdimos tambien Espana
  Nido de consolacion.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  ’We lost our lovely Sion; we also lost our Spain, that nest of consolation.]

“That people who had given Maimonides to the science of the Middle Ages, and who were the mainstay of all the industries and commerce of Spain, left our country en masse.  Spain, deceived by its extraordinary vitality was opening its own veins to satisfy the growing fanaticism, believing that it could survive this loss without danger.  Afterwards came what a modern writer has called ’the foreign body,’ interposing itself in our national life—­those Austrians who came to reign and caused Spain to lose her distinctive character.”