Dictionary

Black Legend en · PROPN

Etymology

Calque of Spanish Leyenda Negra (literally “Black Legend”).

Meanings

1. The depiction of Spain and Spaniards (or, by extension, all Hispanics and their countries of origin) as bloodthirsty and cruel, greedy and fanatical, especially concerning the colonial period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.
   • […]if the black legend seemed to be fading at last, the horrors of the Civil War revived it with a vengeance. Never was a conflict fought more bitterly. 1964, Jan Morris, “Wild Spain”, in Spain, Faber and Faber, published 2008, →ISBN:
   • Here the problem is aggravated by the mutually reinforcing influences of the ‘black legend’ of Spanish greed and cruelty, and the contrasting myth of the American Indian as ‘noble savage’. 1992, Edwin Williamson, The Penguin history of Latin America, London; New York: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 84:

Forms

Relateds

White Legend

Translations (7)

es Leyenda Negra (the depiction of Spain as cruel, greedy and fanatical) · fr Légende Noire (the depiction of Spain as cruel, greedy and fanatical) · pl Czarna Legenda hiszpanii (the depiction of Spain as cruel, greedy and fanatical) · sv svarta legenden (the depiction of Spain as cruel, greedy and fanatical) · pt Lenda Negra (the depiction of Spain as cruel, greedy and fanatical) · fi musta legenda (the depiction of Spain as cruel, greedy and fanatical) · nl Zwarte Legende (the depiction of Spain as cruel, greedy and fanatical)