I read that book years ago-there are other good ones that tell about what was going down on both sides of that ocean at the time-life in that part of Europe was not happy or safe for most-the Spaniards were not nice or all that civilized in their behavior-they were just into rather imaginative methods of torture, not human sacrifice.
The Spanish king and nobles had a particular dislike for some people at that time-Basques from the Pyrenees was one-so being Basque, my ancestors got on a ship and came over here and took their chances-risky, but better than torture and hanging in Spain...
Isabella and Ferdinand had only unified Spain and driven out the last of the Muslim invaders 25 years earlier. Spain had undergone about 700 years of nearly unending warfare.