14. Queen Isabella’s legacy contains much more than the Columbus story
While Isabella is remembered as the Queen who supported the voyages of Columbus, her legacy is actually somewhat darker. Fourteen years before Columbus sailed on his first voyage Isabella and her husband Ferdinand of Aragon established the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in their realms. The Spanish Inquisition was originally established to ensure that converts from Islam and Judaism were not following heretical beliefs, but it soon became a means of enforcing royal edicts that Jews and Muslims must convert to Catholicism or be banished from Spain. The religious intolerance established by Ferdinand and Isabella remained the law in Spain until it was abolished in 1834.