In 1492 Jews, heretics and savages all came together in one place: the city of Granada, which had just been conquered by King Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. These two potentates, the creators of the Spanish Inquisition, took two decisions of great historical importance: the first was to expel all unbaptized Jews; the second was to support Columbus’s expedition to the Indies, which led to Spanish colonial dominion over the various human populations that were discovered on the other side of the Atlantic. As a result of those decisions, the new age and the newly globalized world came to be dominated by three human types, three cultural constructs on which the violence of injustice legitimized by political and religious power was unleashed. Three great historical processes – colonialism, religious intolerance among Christians, and anti-Jewishness / anti-Semitism – were born and began to dominate the history of Europe and the world.

Adriano Prosperi recounts what happened then against the backdrop of the city of Granada in an edition enriched with a new foreword.

From the opening paragraphs:

«One particular date was very effectively fixed in contemporaries’ minds. It was a precise moment in European history, the one that linked the origins of the greatest world empire created by a European power to three social personifications of ‘difference’: Jews, heretics and savages. This is how an Italian chronicler recorded the event, mentioning under the same date two events that were actually distant in time from each other but linked by a common thread: On the 2nd January 1492 the King of Spain took Granata from the Moors; and he expelled the Marranos.

As this entry shows, the day on which the Moorish kingdom of Granada was conquered by the Christian army soon became a memorable date well beyond the Spanish borders. And the defeat of the Moors was consolidated by that other Spanish event, the expulsion of the Marranos. In Spain itself the fall of the Moorish kingdom of Granada instantly became one of the most glorious memories of a warlike religion. The festive calendar of Christian Spain was changed and the day of the conquest was commemorated with special solemnity as el dìa della Toma: and the civil and religious festival was formally approved by the Catholic Church. After the defeat of the Moorish kingdom, two other important events occurred in Granada: [...] the meeting – mediated by the queen’s confessor – between Christopher Columbus and Isabella, and the subsequent agreement to send the caravelles, as specified in the capitolaciones of 17th April 1492. [...] But previously another important decision had been taken which seemed far more significant at the time: on 31st March, again in Granada, the royal edict on the expulsion of the Jews had been signed. Columbus left with a precise memory of what had happened ‘before’, and noted it down in his ship’s log: After expelling all the Jews from your kingdoms and possessions [...] Your Highnesses commanded me to sail to the aforementioned regions of India with a suitable fleet.»

«A light but tough book, dry, concrete and – great quality – proposing a thesis. Analyzing one of the pivotal dates in world history, 1492, Prosperi reconstructs what fundamentally happened in that annus mirabilis in Spain.» Giorgio Fabre, Alias – il manifesto