Starting in 1539, it took Spain 250 years to construct the six-level fortress El Morro in Puerto Rico, and Spain’s former power still emanates from the walls. (photo by Lauren Kramer)
I was in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, recently, when the full magnitude of the Spanish Inquisition hit me like a ton of bricks.
The scene seemed an unlikely one for a blast from the Jewish past. I was with Pablo Garcia, a fast-speaking guide with Spoon, a boutique food and history company, and we were standing in the Plaza del Quinto Centenario, in front of fortifications that were more than 500 years old.
These were fortifications Spain built in the 1500s, not long after Christopher Columbus “discovered” Puerto Rico in 1493. “Discovered,” because the indigenous Taino people had been there for centuries but, for reasons that seem unfathomable now, that didn’t matter to the Spaniards.
Back home in Spain, 300,000 Jews were being expelled, murdered in the Inquisition or forced to convert to Catholicism, with some of them practising their Judaism underground. To appreciate the kind of force they were up against, you just need to pay a visit to Old San Juan and lay eyes on El Morro.
Spain started building El Morro in 1539 and it took 250 years to construct the six-level fortress. Its thick, stone walls, 185 feet above sea level, were punctuated by garritas, dome-shaped sentry booths located shouting distance from one another, so that, when one sentry perceived a threat on the horizon, he simply yelled a warning to his cohorts. El Morro guarded the city’s harbour from invaders and its bastion, with barracks, dungeons and storerooms, still holds original cannons that face the ocean in preparation for defence.
The sites are so well preserved that, were the Spanish to resume control today, one feels certain they’d need very little additional infrastructure to guard the island. I looked at those stone walls that safeguarded the island from many battles over the centuries and marveled at the sheer strength of the Iberian Union. It dawned on me that the Jews of Spain really didn’t stand a chance against a power like this in 1492.
I was jolted back to reality when we stopped for a caffeine buzz at Don Ruiz, a coffee shop located in what was once Spain’s Ballajá Barracks. The coffee beans are from a four-generation family farm specializing in single-harvest, hand-picked beans, Garcia said. “In the 1700s, coffee was big business in Puerto Rico and one in every six cups of coffee worldwide was made with beans grown on the island. Coffee money built our roads and sealed our dams,” he said.
Over the next three hours, I wandered between restaurants in beautifully preserved, colourful buildings in Old San Juan’s narrow, brick-laid streets. I sipped soursop juice, a local hangover cure with a pear-like taste, and sampled mofongo, a pastry made from mashed, fried green plantains.
Spain maintained a stronghold on the island until 1898, when it became the US territory it remains to this day. But the Spanish influence remains pervasive, easily perceptible in the cuisine, the history of the island, the language and the islanders’ distinct cultural identity.
Garcia stopped outside a local bank with a circular symbol above the door. “That’s the seal of Puerto Rico, still used to stamp new laws to this day,” he said. The seal depicts a tower representing Queen Isabella of Castille, a lion representing King Ferdinand II of Aragon and a cross, symbolizing Catholicism and Spain’s “discovery” of the “New World.”
It struck me as interesting that these two Catholic monarchs, the architects of the Spanish Inquisition, are still being lauded. Their legacies are sealed in Puerto Rico’s legal documents even today, and the authority they wielded 500 years ago still can be seen in those seemingly impenetrably thick stone walls of El Morro.
Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.