When people ask what N liked the most on his first, two-week-long visit to Spain, the answer is, France. The several hours we spent in France erased everything we saw of Spain throughout the trip.
Spain has been whining for 200 years that it’s marginalized in Europe and nobody sees the Spanish as being equally important to Europe as the French.
And it’s true but, honestly, who’s to blame? You cross the border, and immediately everything is prettier, tastier, cleaner, more elegant. It’s the same Basque people living where we crossed into France. The only difference is which nation absorbed them.
N is now dreaming of a long holiday in France, comparing airlines and lodging costs. And I understand it completely. Spain was great, don’t get me wrong. But France was at a whole different level.
Clarissa's Blog 
Spain ceased being the first lord of First World nations not in 1588 but rather in 1492 when Spain’s Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon issued the Alhambra Decree & unilaterally expelled the Jews from Spain. They followed this up with the systematic torture of Spain’s large converso population (Jews who had converted to Xtianity).
The Alhambra Decree forced some 200,000 Jews to convert to Xtianity and between 40,000 to 100,000 expelled Jews fled primarily to the Ottoman empire. During the Spanish Inquisition, established prior to the Alhambra Decree the Spanish church spied on new Jewish converts. The Inquisition used various methods of torture to extract confessions in the name of the love of God.
I find it interesting that the British and French empires likewise totally collapsed following the Shoah. The British empire lost control over both Israel and India in 1948. The British French failure to seize control of the Suez Canal in 1956 marked the end of the British empire. Whooooooooooooooooop. All British colonies across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean asserted their right to self-determination.
The French piglets witnessed the collapse of their empire in the First Indochina War (1946-54). France said bye bye to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu booted the French out of Asia. The Algerian War (1954-62) witnessed the total collapse of the French empire in Africa.
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