Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Designed as a system for managing the
economic development of the New World
as well as the transformation of the indige-
nous population into orderly Christian sub-
jects of the Spanish Crown, the
encomienda
plan all too often degenerated into a system
of forced labor that was scarcely distin-
guishable from slavery. Despite the com-
plaints of such clergymen as B
ARTOLOMÉ
DE
L
AS
C
ASAS
and the protective decrees that
they persuaded the Crown to issue during
the first 50 years of the conquest in Amer-
ica, greed and self-interest among the colo-
nists persistently thwarted salutary efforts.
Negative by-products of efforts to reform or
abolish the
encomienda
system included the
introduction of African slavery into the
New World and the perpetuation of a pat-
tern of debt peonage that survived in Span-
ish America for centuries.
Castilians and Portuguese of the Golden
Age launched a global conquest that cre-
ated vast empires and dazzling fortunes.
With the collapse of their colonial achieve-
ments the reality of Iberian poverty was
starkly presented at the beginning of the
20th century. Spain could sustain no more
than a modest and austere existence, while
Portugal was derided as the “poorhouse” of
western Europe.
These perceptions were not merely the
grumblings of disillusioned intellectuals or
the fruit of foreign prejudice. Nature had, in
fact, given the Iberian Peninsula a poverty
of resources. Large stretches of infertile
land, insufficient internal waterways to fill
the needs of irrigation and transportation,
and a paucity of fauna or even of flora were
paralleled by limited mineral resources,
particularly of the iron, coal, and oil essen-
tial for industrial development. During the
F
RANCO
and S
ALAZAR
dictatorships, denial
of these realities continued to be accompa-
nied by evocations of past glories that
became ever more fantastical.
The establishment of democratic govern-
ments and market economies after 1975 in
both Spain and Portugal compelled both
nations to look at their economic situation
with a clear eye. Subsidies from the Euro-
pean Union and solicitation of foreign
investment could only be counted upon up
to a certain point. For both countries, but
especially Portugal, the preferred solution
seemed to be the promotion of tourism. The
adoption of this tactic has, however, led to
severe environmental damage in many
areas. Moreover neither government has
been willing to deal seriously or consistently
with fundamental questions including dry-
ing-up of water resources, extinction of
native species, and massive pollution on
Enrique IV
environmental issues in Spain and
Portugal
The Iberian Peninsula was famed in ancient
times for its harsh, sun-baked landscape,
and this image was not much altered dur-
ing the Middle Ages when Europeans
dwelling north of the Pyrenees thought of
their continent's southwestern corner as an
isolated war zone in a centuries-long strug-
gle between Christendom and Islam. Even
those who possessed a better-informed
awareness of the gardens of A
NDALUSIA
and
the forests of northern Portugal were also
conscious of the arid central plateau and
the lack of good harbors along most of the
coastline. Driven as much by hard condi-
tions at home as by the lure of foreign lands,
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