Black Legend

A 1598 Dutch engraving by Theodor de Bry depicting a Spaniard feeding slain Indigenous American women and children to his dogs. De Bry's works are characteristic of anti-Spanish propaganda which resulted from the Eighty Years' War. The Black Legend (Spanish: leyenda negra) or the Spanish Black Legend (Spanish: leyenda negra española) is a purported historiographical tendency which consists of anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda. Its proponents argue that its roots date back to the 16th century, when Spain's European rivals were seeking, by political and psychological means, to demonize the Spanish Empire, its people, and its culture, minimize Spanish discoveries and achievements, and counter its influence and power in world affairs.

According to the theory, Protestant propaganda published during the Hispano-Dutch War and the Anglo-Spanish War against the Catholic monarchs of the 16th century fostered an anti-Hispanic bias among subsequent historians. Along with a distorted view of the history of Spain and the history of Latin America, other parts of the world in the Portuguese Empire were also affected as a result of the Iberian Union and the Luso-Dutch Wars. Although some 17th-century propaganda was based in real events from the Spanish colonization of the Americas, some of which involved atrocities, the mainstream academia around the Leyenda Negra suggests that it often employed lurid and exaggerated depictions of violence, and ignored similar behavior by other powers.