err.. actually false over-simplification.
Spain freed itself from 700 years of moorish (muslim) rule. - Spain didn't suddenly free itself.
This is the Iberian peninsula in 800 AD. Mostly Moslem, but there was a chunk in the North-West that was still Christian
Then here's Iberia in 1000 AD
And you see that 25% is already in Christian hands
Then 1200 AD - and most is already in Christian hands
And in 1400
And already by 1400 nearly everything is in Christian hands
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So chunks of Spain were under Muslim rule for only a few decades (Galicia, Basque country) at most. And other chunks were there for centuries
Next, the Spanish Inquisition
The total number executed was too many - it was 3000 people over 400 years. Yet that's lower than the numbers killed in the Witch hunts in the UK and the Americas at the same time
And, it's a lower conviction rate than the civil courts
What WAS the inquistion? It wasn't targeted against Protestants (there were practically none in the Iberian peninsula), it wasn't particularly against Jews (if they didn't convert, they were kicked out - not nice either, but stick with this) - it was targeted against sleeper agent Muslims who faked conversion to Christianity but were a fourth estate
the REASON the Spain is wholly Catholic and Spanish, without (until very recent years) a Muslim or Moorish "fifth column" within is BECAUSE the Spanish Church carried on relentless spiritual warfare and uprooted Islam utterly and totally drove it from Spain, after 500 years of entrenchment. That is no mean feat. The Muslims themselves were not as effective at WHOLLY driving Christians from the Middle East as Spanish Catholicism was at expunging Islam from Iberia. Nowhere else on the battlefield between Islam and Christianity were the Muslims not only defeated in the field and at sea (by Spain, in Spain and at Lepanto and elsewhere), but the religion actually extinguished. The Spanish were militarily very aggressive and effective - that is why they won - but that militant nature was also expressed spiritually, which is why they also won the spiritual war with Islam.
the Spanish inquisition during its time was the least brutal judicial institution in early modern Europe.
it's aim was eradicating the MOSLEM fourth column
Out of 200,000 odd people prosecuted by the Inquisition during the centuries of its existence, about 3500 were executed. An execution rate of less than 2%. The vast majority of people were absolved or convicted/reconciled without severe punishment.
Out of the roughly 350, 000 converts from Judaism present in Spain during the 1500s and 1600s, probably less than 1000 were executed over a period of 200 years or 7 generations. If we annualize the execution rate, it means that you are more likely to be murdered as a London resident in 2018 than you were to be executed as a Jew in Spain by the Spanish Inquisition. 1.6/100,000 compared to a homicide rate of 2.4 in London.
The Spanish inquisition was the only court in Europe which did not systematically use torture. Every secular court in continental Europe did so with no limit whatsoever while the Spanish Inquisition had strict rules and restrictions on its use. In fact it was frequent for petty criminals to blaspheme when apprehended to come under the inquisitions jurisdiction. According to Jewish American historian Stephen Haliczer, torture was used in less than 2% of cases, never more than one session in total and always following strict procedure.
If we just look at the same time and only in Protestant Germany, over 35,000 witches were burned during the same period. Just compare the death count with the total of 3,500 for the whole range of crimes over which the Inquisition had jurisdiction in the entire Spanish empire.
That's only Germany - there were witch hunts in the British Empire as well
The Spanish Inquisition was bad by today's standards. But it was pretty good for the standards of the time. It certainly does not compare to the hundreds of thousands massacred in Central Europe during the Counter Reformation, the 30,000 Huguenots massacred in France or the estimated 260,000 gruesomely executed in England alone, including thousands of Catholics, during the same period.