Incomparable Realms: Spain during the Golden Age, 1500-1700
Jeremy Robbins
Reaktion Books, £25, 464 pages
Spain’s Golden Age spanned the reigns of five monarchs which form-ed a “lineage of piety”: Charles I (Charles V when Holy Roman Emperor), Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV, ending with the death in 1700 of Charles II, the “Bewitched”, “weak of limb and mind” after years of dynastic inbreeding. For much of the period Spain was a major, even domin-ant, European power, having consolidated the disparate kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula. It was Charles V who shaped its ideology and culture for those two centuries.
