Spanish Inquisition: Did you mean...?

100 years ago, celebrations marking the end of the First World War were cut short by the onslaught of a devastating disease - the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. Its early origins and initial geographical starting...

Cochineal is a brilliant red dye extracted from the crushed bodies of parasitic insects which prey on cacti in the warmer parts of the Americas. The dye was an important part of trade in ancient Mesoamerica and South America and throughout...

The buccaneers who roamed the Spanish Main and the pirates who plundered the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean during the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730) needed a place of refuge where they could share out and...

The Index of Prohibited Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) was a list of written works condemned as heretical or injurious to the Christian faith by the Catholic Church at the Council of...

The encomienda was a system where Spanish adventurers and settlers were granted the legal right to extract forced labour from indigenous tribal chiefs in the Americas colonies of the Spanish Empire. In return, the Europeans were expected...

The Aztec Empire (c. 1345-1521) covered at its greatest extent most of northern Mesoamerica. Aztec warriors were able to dominate their neighbouring states and permit rulers such as Montezuma to impose...

Juan de Grijalva (aka Grijalba, 1489-1527) was a Spanish conquistador who explored the eastern coast of Mexico in 1518. His notable achievements included a demonstration that the Yucatán Peninsula was just that and not, as previously...

Video about the Spanish flu, the biggest pandemic in modern history, created as a didactic resource for BNEScolar (BNE).

The sunbaked plain of the Alentejo region in central Portugal is called planicie dourada (golden plain) by the Portuguese, and it is dotted with cork oak forests, vineyards, olive groves...

The Columbian exchange is a term coined by Alfred Crosby Jr. in 1972 that is traditionally defined as the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World of Europe and Africa and the New World of the Americas...