The dominant Spanish Catholic culture was a prevailing force and did its best to tower over over cultures that it encountered. The Spanish Catholic church showed such contempt for other believes (Judaism, Protestants, Scientists, etc) that when these believes started to seep into their own culture, they went as far as to create ways to purge the Spanish culture by means of lying and torture. A good example of this was the Spanish Inquisition. During this time period, people that were even just suspected of not being true Catholics were often unfairly tortured and imprisoned due to the Catholic church’s fear of falling out of power.
Goya’s Ghost is a movie about the Spanish Inquisition and filters it through the eyes and accounts of the famous Spanish painter Francisco Goya. In the beginning of this movie Goya is accused of painting the Catholic clergy in unfavorable lights and is told that he has many enemies to which he replies that he his glad that he has more powerful friends then. This was common with Catholicism in Spain. Although the church worked hard to purge Spain of non-Catholics, people with favorable connections were able to avoid the harsh punishments. Others, even the wealthy, were not so lucky. Even rich merchants and their children were not safe from purging.
Paranoia and power were so tightly held by the Catholic church that the police forces in Spain were taught to spot even the slightest references to help indicate who might not be Catholic so that they could be rounded up and imprisoned. They were told things like; people who put their hands in front of them on the streets did so because they were uncircumcised and Jewish, people who believed in science were heretics, people who spit sideways were protestants, etc. In Goya’s Ghost, the police observe Natalie Portman, a wealthy merchant’s daughter, turn down pork in a tavern and have her arrested. When she states she didn’t eat it because she didn’t like the taste they put her to “the question” -torturing- until she falsely confessed to not eating pork because she was Jewish.
Things like the above incident were common. The Catholic church found evidence for heresy everywhere because they were looking for it and when they could turn up no real evidence, they would torture them until they confessed. After a confession they would sentence the prisoner to a hearing which rarely came so most of these people spent the remainders of their lives in the prisons where they were treated harshly, rarely fed and didn’t receive medical attention. After being sentenced, there was rarely an event that could overturn the decision because the Catholic church believed it would make them look weak and would make the king question their practice of torture.
Although the Spanish Inquisition was interrupted by the invasion by the French and Napoleon who banned the practices of the Spanish Inquisition and punished the Catholic church, the British invaded Spain sometime later and reinstated the Catholic church and its subjugation on the Spanish people.
