HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 325

ters were well chosen, the overall direction
of Spanish policy during the first half of the
18th century was retrograde. Spanish pol-
icy was focused on the recovery of lost
dependencies and the revival of past glories
in Europe while the American colonies
were neglected, leaving economic opportu-
nities both there and at home to await a
later generation of Bourbon reformers.

defeat of the colonial forces and the transfer
of the islands to the control of the United
States. Filipino independence would have
to wait for another half-century, but evi-
dence of Spain's long rule of these islands
quickly faded away.

Picasso, Pablo (Pablo Ruiz y
Picasso) (1881-1973)
Spanish painter
Born in M ÁLAGA , the son of a minor painter
and art teacher, Picasso had his early train-
ing at art schools in Coruña and B ARCELONA
and spent a few months at the Royal Acad-
emy at Madrid. By 1899 he was a member
of a circle of young artists in Barcelona
who, to some extent, were influenced by
native masters such as E L G RECO but were
increasingly drawn to new trends in French
painting. After 1900 Picasso spent more and
more time in Paris, gradually weakening
his ties to Barcelona. The first of his famous
phases of thematic and stylistic approach to
painting, the “blue period,” began in Barce-
lona, but his “rose period” and then the
development of cubism occurred as an
expatriate. During the first three decades of
the 20th century this increasingly famous
artist became more identified with France
than with his native country, and he lived
in Paris or, later, in the south of France dur-
ing the S PANISH CIVIL WAR and World War II.
That Picasso was not entirely divorced from
his ancestral roots was dramatically demon-
strated, however, in one of his best-known
paintings, the massive canvas called Guer-
nica. It was inspired by the bombing of the
historic seat of B ASQUE NATIONALISM by the
same name during the war in Spain. The
German allies of the Nationalist rebels car-
ried out a murderous aerial assault against

Philippine Islands (Islas Filipinas)
This vast archipelago lying some 500 miles
east of the Asian mainland and including
more than 7,000 islands contains a total of
more than 115,000 square miles. The archi-
pelago extends more than 1,000 miles from
north to south and more than 600 miles
east to west, with an abundant wealth of
agriculture and mineral resources. This rich
prize fell to Spain in 1521 when F ERDINAND
M AGELLAN claimed the islands for his sover-
eign after crossing the Pacific. Effective
occupation did not begin until 1561, and
Manila, the seat of government, was not
established until 1571. For the next 300
years Spain clung to possession of this trea-
sure trove, which could be reached only by
a long, laborious voyage across two oceans.
The Manila Galleon, sailing from Acapulco
in N EW S PAIN , made the annual trip that
symbolized Spain's determination to hold
this most distant outpost of empire. It had
to contend with persistent resistance from
the “Moros” (the Muslim inhabitants of
Mindanao) in the south; European rival-
ries, including British occupation of Manila
in 1762-63; and periodic revolts by the
Tagalog-speaking population (a people of
Indonesian origin). The Filipino revolution-
ary movement triumphed in 1898 when
the S PANISH -A MERICAN W AR led to the