The conjectures seem to focus on the Spanish/English strife of the 15th and following centuries, and Protestant northern Europe's understandable desire to paint Catholic Spain in the most damaging light.
Mad Dawg,
you wrote:
“The conjectures seem to focus on the Spanish/English strife of the 15th and following centuries, and Protestant northern Europe’s understandable desire to paint Catholic Spain in the most damaging light.”
Yes, scholars have shown there was an interesting nexus of interests on the part of Protestant England, Holland and Catholic France that came together to combat the greatest imperial power on earth: Spain. The Black Legends were formed to blacken the name of the Spanish everywhere on earth. The prejudice against the Spanish was so strong among English speakers that it is only now in the last few decades that scholar have been able to break away for its holding power and make themselves actually look at the documents that the Spanish have been pointing to for generations. Finally the truth is getting out. This is why some scholars have had the guts to admit they were once wrong. Henry Arthur Francis Kamen is one of them.