Black Voices in Early Modern Spanish Literature, 1500-1750

In this groundbreaking study, Diana Berruezo-Sánchez recovers key chapters in the history of Afro-Iberian diasporas by exploring the literary contributions and life experiences of black African communities and individuals in early modern Spain. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, international trade involving chattel slavery led to significant populations of enslaved, free(d), and half-manumitted black African women, men, and children in the Iberian Peninsula. These demographic changes transformed Spain's urban and social landscapes.

In exploring Spain's role in the transatlantic slave trade and its effects on cultural forms of the period, Berruezo-Sánchez examines a broad range of texts and unearths new documents relating to black African poets, performers, and black confraternities. Her discoveries evince the broad yet largely disregarded literary and artistic impact of the African diaspora in early modern Spain, expanding the scope of linguistic practices beyond habla de negros and creating space for early modern black poets in the Spanish literary canon.

These textual sources challenge established understandings of black Africans and black African history in early modern Spain. They show how black Africans exerted significant cultural agency by collectively contributing to and shaping the literary texts of the period, including those of the popular genre villancicos de negros, and by developing artistic traditions as musicians, dancers, and poets. As both creators and consumers of cultural forms, black African men and women navigated a restrictive, coercive slave society yet negotiated their own physical and cultural spaces.

Diana Berruezo-Sánchez, Honorary Research Fellow, Sub-Faculty of Spanish, University of Oxford

Diana Berruezo-Sánchez is a Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, where she held full-time positions for six years. Her research focuses on the cultural productions of Afro-Iberian diasporas in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She has obtained funding from the Leverhulme Trust, the John Fell Fund, the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute, the Newberry Library, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the European Research Council to lead interdisciplinary research projects. She has conducted research in Spain, Italy, the US, and the UK.

List of FiguresAcknowledgementsNote on TranslationsIntroduction1. Revisiting Histories, Rethinking Spaces2. Beyond the Eye of the Beholder: Black Africans in Early Modern Spanish Literary Texts3. Performing Blackness: Villancicos de Negros and Other Religious Spectacles4. Spaces of Cultural Negotiation in Early Modern Spain: Music and Dance in the Street, in Courts, and on Board Ships5. The Intangible Poetic Legacy of Black VoicesConclusionsAppendix A: A List of Early Modern Spanish Literary Texts with Black CharactersAppendix B: A Catalogue of Black Stereotypes in Seventeenth-Century Villancicos de Negros Performed in SpainAppendix C: Fourteen New Villancicos de NegrosAppendix D: Jácara de sucesos about Francisco de Meneses (1687)BibliographyIndex