Spain proudly returns Ferdinand the Catholic, the "prince" who fascinated Machiavelli

As said a TV critic, "the first success of the series Isabel (TVE) must exist. "Because" the historical vicissitude of Spain is deep, varied, disturbed, improbable, rich in epic and even in epic ".

California and other American states come to vandalize and even topple the statues of Christopher Columbus in the name of an indigenous genocide perpetrated by Protestant Anglo-Saxon whites of the conquest of the West. Not to mention Argentina, pioneer of this revisionist iconoclasm that targets the figure of Christopher Columbus and to whom Spain has witnessed so far without reacting to the extent of the affront.

This is why, in recent years, the human, political and epic adventure of Catholic kings – of which, besides the sponsorship of the Genoese admiral's expedition, is little taught in our schools – is a raw material for cinema and cinema. The television is very positive.

Spanish television produced and broadcast the series between 2012 and 2014 Isabel (3 seasons, 39 episodes). Unexplainably, Argentina was not one of the 16 US-including US-countries that published it. Luckily can be seen complete, with excellent definition and streaming, on the TVE's official website.

Although sometimes focusing on the impact of television on historical rigor and with some anachronisms of language, the series is of an excellent level and has the essential in the genre: it reconstructs convincing characters, who humanize without removing the depth, and exposes very well the geopolitical plot that is at stake throughout history. This also helps to appreciate the Cyclopean task performed by these two political animals that were Isabel and Fernando. Machiavelli said: "of the unimportant king became the first monarch of Christianity ".

"Her works -the Florentine wrote in Chapter XXI of the Prince They have all been great and sometimes extraordinary. At the beginning of his reign, he attacked Granada, the starting point of his conquests. He went to war while he was at peace with his neighbors and, knowing that no one would oppose it, distracted her with the attention of the nobles of Castile who, Thinking about this war, they did not think about political changes, and by this means they gained authority and reputation over them and without realizing it. "

And he adds: "…he has always meditated and executed extraordinary feats which provoked the constant astonishment of the subjects and kept his thought entirely occupied by the success of his adventures. And his actions are born one after the other so as not to give time to men to calmly prepare something to their detriment ".

A eulogy of Machiavelli may not be the best letter of introduction because he has not always enjoyed a good reputation. His conception of politics is speculative and absolute materialism. Not to mention that it is an art that does not dominate. Like many even brilliant thinkers, the shift to action was not commensurate with their ability to theorize.

In Fernando He always badigns a second intention to everything he does, but it is difficult to believe that all his exploits have the sole purpose of "diverting" the nobles from their quarrels, although it is true that One of the great tasks to which it has been devoted has been to impose the authority of the Crown, that is to say, the state, to all parties . That's why he was a "modern" king who sped up the medieval transition.

On the other hand, Machiavelli (1469-1527), although contemporary of Fernando de Aragón (1452-1516), did not know him. What he learned from him was the flattering reports of the ambbadador of Florence before the court of Catholic kings, Francesco Guicciardini. This, explains in a paper the historian Sabino Fernández Campo, of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, admired the capacity of the Aragonese get others to suggest to him what he had already decided to do; It was only then that he announced his decisions, giving everyone the feeling of being part of it, thus avoiding premature opposition.

The advice of Machiavelli, therefore, is not for this "Prince" but inspired by him for the benefit of others.

Historians agree that Fernando he was one of the greatest statesmen of his time. This is what we would call today a complete "picture": military leader and civil ruler, in both facets it was successful. He has behaved adroitly in arbitration with all the groups who challenged the authority of the monarchy and abroad, he was a qualified diplomat.

When he married Isabel, kings were not either. It was a smart bet from Fernando's father, another clever politician: Juan II, king of Aragon. In dying King Enrique IV of Castile, half-brother of Isabel, she proclaimed queen but this civil war remained unchanged, as Juana, Enrique's daughter, also aspired to the throne. This fight was fought and defeated Fernando on behalf of Isabel. Shortly after, January 19, 1479 – 540 years ago – he put the crown of Aragon on the death of his father. Since then, they have co-directed their two kingdoms but without uniting them. It was surely one of the best matched, most "egalitarian" and most successful political marriages in history.

When they got married illegally so as not to anger Isabel's half-brother, the united Spain of which they dreamed was a complete utopia. Thirty years later, not only had they managed to unify the kingdom, but they had turned it into a Mediterranean power, but they had discovered America – although both kings died without being fully aware of the magnitude of the new continent – and thanks to a series of matrimonial alliances, they bequeathed to their grandson Carlos a huge empire.

"Success too fast, of course, to secure its strength"says the French historian Pierre Vilar, in his History of Spain (Critical, 2010). "But this time bequeathed to Spain the legitimate pride (…) not only of having been a considerable power, but also the first in importance of the founding nations of the vast colonial empires."

TRAILER OF THE SECOND SEASON OF "ISABEL"

We already know that this greatness had clay feet and it will ensue a deep decline which, among other things, shows that the grandchildren of Ferdinand and Isabella have not inherited their administrative seriousness.

One of the most dramatic moments for Fernando, and that the TVE series manages to convey with great realism, it is when, attending the agony of his wife, 54 years probably for a cancer of the matrix, the king, surrounded by his usual advisers, feels the loneliness of being the only one to be aware of the risk that represents all the work done with Isabel. Others are engaged in legalities and do not see the situation as a whole.

The kings had five children, but the only male and heir had died too young without leaving offspring. Isabel, the eldest daughter, dies giving birth to a man who, for a time, is the hope of Isabel and Fernando, who manage to keep him in court to educate him as his heir. But this child also dies with barely three years.

That leaves in the line of succession to Juana, whose parents had married the son of Maximiliano of Austria, Felipe, called El Hermoso, and that he already had two sons with him, Carlos (the future Carlos V) and Fernando. This marriage was very bad, because Felipe was an ambitious man without much enlightenment who immediately began to conspire against his in-laws and nothing less than to approach France, the eternal enemy of Catholics.

To make matters worse, Juana was very much in love with her handsome husband who completely dominated her.

The death of Isabel would leave the crown of Castile in the hands of his daughter and, in fact, of Felipe, already open enemy of Fernando.

Here you can see how the king realized, little by little, that his advisers and his own dying wife understand that there is no other way to change Isabel's will. and leave the crown in their hands, as a regent.

This will be only a temporary solution, since a good part of the Catalan nobility will take part for Felipe. Given the Loyalists' argument that he is a foreigner, the answer is that … Fernando is also a stranger! Proof that Spanish particularisms come from far away.

Fernando de Aragón was a victim not only in life, but also in posterity, because many historians have magnified the image of Isabel, the Castilian, to the point of forgetting her brilliant husband. A case opposed to the silencing of women that feminist revisionism insists so strongly.

"His death is for me the greatest job that this life can give me …"Fernando wrote after Isabel's funeral. Indeed, he lost the throne in the hands of Philip and, having been the most powerful king of Christendom, had to return to Aragon.

There is then another series of events that also amazed their peers and aroused the admiration of those who study it.

Fernando had started fighting at the age of 14 and since then he has not stopped. His father badociated him very early with the affairs of the kingdom. When she married Isabel, she was only 21, but she had accumulated significant experience in the state, in addition to having spawned at least two bastard children who have never left and who have always been promoted. He had a special claw, since he did not stop fighting all his life; whenever necessary, he put himself at the head of his troops.

Confined in Aragon after being widowed, He formed an alliance no less than with his former enemy France: He married the niece of the ruler of this country with the intention of having an heir to thwart Castile in the hands of Felipe. This situation did not last long because soon after his son-in-law is dead mysteriously and, in the midst of suspicion, Fernando returned to the regency. What is said, a resilient.

The dynastic alliance of Castile and Aragon was the base of the Hispanic unit. Kingdoms were linked at the level of sovereigns and foreign policy, but each retained its own organization, laws, and institutions. But the seed of the tendency to the administrative unit remained – which will eventually be completed with the arrival of the Bourbons in the eighteenth century – because the Catholic Kings devoted themselves to strengthening the public and embracing power. of the Crown. private and sectoral power of the nobles.

Isabel and Fernando have done a considerable amount of work on administrative scheduling and financial remediation. They also founded the Inquisition, it is well known, with all its obscure and ultimately negative aspects for Spain, but religious unity was one of the driving forces behind it. political unity. In addition to the alliance with Rome. In Aragon, Fernando put an end to a century of peasant conflicts and revolts by abolishing the so-called "bad uses" of feudalism.

In search of unity and inner peace, the Reconquest followed a task that took more than a decade and ended in 1492, the year of the arrival of Columbus in America.

Fernando then concentrated on the definitive expulsion of the French from their territories and the consolidation of the northern frontier. He also fought against them for the kingdom of Naples. Sicily and Sardinia would also be under their control and in Africa, among others, Melilla, Oran, Tripoli and Algiers.

In their desire to isolate the kingdom of France, Catholic kings promoted the marriage of their children with the heirs of the kingdoms of Portugal, England and the Germanic Empire. As we have seen, they were not the happiest decisions but they gave birth to this "empire in which the sun does not go down", according to the expression that was popularized at the time.

When he died, Fernando was 63 years old. He had been king of Sicily for eighty eight years, of Aragon for 37 years and ruled Castile for 42 years, including 30 with Queen Elizabeth.

Six months before his death, January 23, 1516, he wrote: "It has been more than seven hundred years since the crown was ever as big or as big as now, in Westeros and Levante, and more , after God, for my work and my work ".

In 2005, French Socialist MEP Bernard Poignant wrote an article entitled "France, I love your story", in which he complained of the habit of revising and pursuing the past with categories of the present. "It is tiring to repent and apologize for every step in the history of France," he said.

A similar feeling will have seized a lot in Spain also against retroactive questions to the Conquest. A historical contradiction.

Fortunately, the winds seem to change in the peninsula. This is demonstrated by the TVE series which, on the other hand, it is not the eulogy that at other times has also obscured history.

A Isabel, the film was followed The split crown, about insomnia of Fernando after the death of his wife, a film that also makes the connection with the series about his grandson, the emperor Charles Quint.

Fernando the Catholic was aware of his greatness. It's good that Spain is too, who loves its history and gives this king the crown he deserves.