6. James Salgado: Anti-Spanish Sentiment and the Popish Plot

The case of James Salgado, the Romish priest turned Protestant, is extremely interesting in the context of the Spanish Black Legend. Writing in the 1670s and 1680s, Salgado claims to be a Spanish ex-priest who was imprisoned by the Inquisition, served time rowing as a galley slave, escaped to Europe (France, the Low Countries), and finally arrived in England. Although his works contain anti-Spanish propaganda, his treatise-description of bullfighting in particular includes numerous laudatory commentaries about Spanish culture that envision Spanish mores in a positive (or at least neutral) light. The ambiguity between the ideological and propagandistic purpose of his work and the author’s origins reflects the nature of much pamphlet literature about Spain as both the land of romance and religious fanaticism.