Empire Phobia and Black Legend
The view of María Elvira Roca Barea
Our Blanco White series, which runs between the shores of Spain and the United Kingdom, could not do without María Elvira Roca Barea, the author of Imperiofobia y leyenda negra(Siruela, 2016), a book analysing the relationship between the concepts of empire and black legend which is already in its 15th edition. The author, after covering empire phobia in the cases of Rome, the United States and Russia, focuses on the Spanish Empire to defend that the generally accepted narrative of Spain’s history is based rather on interested propaganda than on real events.
María Elvira Roca Barea is a philologist and teacher of Spanish Language and Literature in secondary education. She has worked for the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and taught at Harvard University.
