the tower of power

When power changed hands, the Torre de Comares was the setting for three momentous events of state. Here, in the last days of 1491, the Sultan Boabdil held the council which decided to surrender to the Castilians who laid siege to Granada in their camp at Santa Fe. There was little to discuss, since he was all too aware of the hopelessness of the situation. And the people of Granada remembered, with terror, the pitiful fate of the Moors of Malaga, not so many years earlier. The Christians had promised them that if they did not surrender immediately - thus forcing them to continue fighting to take the Alcazaba - they would all be sold into slavery for the rest of their lives. The offer was rejected, the final battle was fought, and the promise was mercilessly kept.

Shortly after the city was taken on the 2nd of January of 1492, legend has it that Queen Isabel received Christopher Columbus here and, as he kneeled before her, granted him her permission to embark on his journey across the Atlantic, which she was said to finance by pawning her jewels, although in fact she simply borrowed the money on promise to repay from a Valencian money-lender - a Jew who hoped that this gesture of trust would cause him to be spared if his people were expelled.

He was right about the expulsion, but wrong about the indulgence. Here again, only three months after Christian power had, at long last, been asserted over all of Spain, on March 31, 1492, Isabel and her husband Ferdinand, seated solemnly on their thrones, declared that all Jews who did not give up their religion and convert would be expelled from the land - thus, at a stroke, giving rise to the Sephardic diaspora throughout Europe, and mainly in the countries of the Ottoman Empire, where the often wealthy and talented refugees were welcomed.

The Jews might have escaped their fate if the fear of losing face had not been greater than the desire for gold. The Monarchs were seriously considering an offer of 30,000 ducats made by the Jewish community to have the order reversed, but the Church, in the person of its Main Inquisitor, the fanatical Friar Torquemada, had a special grudge against the Israelites because many of them continued to practice Judaism even though they had officially embraced Christianity.

When Torquemada heard that a deal was afoot, he burst into the Monarchs’ meeting with the emissary of the Jews, holding a crucifix before him, and cried “Christ was sold by a Jew for thirty pieces of silver, and you are going to sell Spain for thirty thousand ducats!”, throwing the cross at their feet before striding out. Regretfully, the Monarchs - who badly needed the money after the many battles they had waged to win Granada - called the deal off for fear of losing face, and the Jews were expelled.

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