MADRID: Was she a saint or a tyrant, an intolerant crusader or a uniter of nations, a devoted spouse and mother or a headstrong and ambitious woman?
As Spain commemorates the 500th anniversary of the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile, known as Isabella the Catholic, on November 26, controversy continues to rage about Spain's greatest queen and one of the most important rulers in history.
With her spouse King Ferdinand, Isabella presided over the birth of modern Spain, uniting it geographically, consolidating its Christian identity and dispatching Christopher Columbus on a voyage that was to turn Spain into a world power and change the course of history.
Yet while Spain's Catholic Church is trying to persuade the Vatican to proclaim Isabella (Isabel in Spanish) a saint, opponents point out that she also created the Inquisition, waged a relentless crusade against Islam and expelled Spain's then-flourishing Jewish community.
A range of exhibitions, congresses and concerts are being staged all over Spain to revive the memory of Isabella, born in 1451 in Madrigal de las Altas Torres near Avila, the daughter of King Juan II of Castile.
The controversy surrounding the Queen begins with her looks. A well-known portrait shows her as a wrinkled and stern-looking matron with a double chin, while other paintings indicate she may once have been an attractive young woman with fair skin and long, blonde hair.
From age 17, Isabella displayed an independent mind and high ambition, thwarting the plans of her older half-brother, King Enrique IV, to wed her to the king of Portugal, an older man in whose court she would have played the secondary role of a royal consort.
Isabella chose as her husband Ferdinand (Fernando in Spanish), the handsome and shrewd crown prince of the smaller kingdom of Aragon, whom she married in 1469. A forged papal dispensation was necessary to permit the union, as the two were first cousins.
Her choice determined the history of the Iberian Peninsula, uniting Castile and Aragon to form the nucleus of modern Spain instead of forging a link between Castile and Portugal.
Isabella is believed to have manoeuvred to sideline the legitimate heir to the Castilian throne, King Enrique's daughter Juana. At her coronation following Enrique's death in 1474, Isabella surprised her court by having a nobleman display a sword, the ultimate symbol of male power.
"I did not know of any queen who would have usurped this male attribute," historian Manuel Fernandez Alvarez quotes Ferdinand as saying. Isabella and Ferdinand appear to have been genuinely in love and had five children together, though their marriage later suffered from her jealousy over his womanizing.
Yet independently of their personal relations, the two formed a formidable power couple in which Isabella wielded the most influence. In 1492, Isabella and Ferdinand completed the Christian Reconquest of Spain from Arab-Berber Moors who had ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula for eight centuries.
Muslim rule ended when Boabdil, the king of Granada, handed the Catholic monarchs the keys to Spain's last Moorish bastion. Just a few months later, the monarchs gave Spain's tens of thousands of Jews four months to pack their bags or convert to Christianity. The departure of the Jews was a great loss for Spain, depriving it of a valuable community of scholars and scientists, merchants and craftsmen.
In the early 16th century, Islam was also banned, a decision which separated Europe from the Muslim world. Many historians say the expulsion of Jews and Muslims obeyed political rather than racist motives on the part of rulers seeking to unify the country.
Yet many also see devout Isabella as something of a Christian fundamentalist. She and Ferdinand created a brutal Inquisition which killed large numbers of alleged heretics, and missionary zeal played a part in her decision to finance the voyage of Christopher Columbus, whose discovery of the New World ended the Middle Ages and opened the colonial era.
By agreeing to help Columbus in his ambitious plans, Isabella launched the creation of a Spanish empire, which exterminated Indian populations and subjected millions of Africans to slavery, but also created new cultures in Latin America and the Caribbean.
On November 26, 1504, the chiming of church bells announced the death of the Queen at age 53 in Medina del Campo near Valladolid. Ferdinand lived until 1516, marrying the teenage niece of the king of France. -dpa
