Spain Quotes

“Clearly, this is an historic form of waterboarding, and, interestingly, the professional torturers of the Inquisition were not only happy to define it as a form of torture, but by the early 1600s had abandoned it in favour of methods they ‘regarded as more merciful’.46”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

“The statistics bear out their opinion: after the Bible, Don Quixote is the most widely translated and most published work in literary history.”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

“Leading aristocrats craved these offices because they offered intimate access to the king, and most coveted of all was Groom of the Stool, who attended on the king’s defecation”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

“The Turkish retreat left Charles’s troops restless for the fight, but the victory has become legendary and the Viennese bakers are said to have baked in celebration a new, deliciously light butter pastry in the shape of the Islamic crescent moon, pastries that today we still call croissants.”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682

“but the victory has become legendary and the Viennese bakers are said to have baked in celebration a new, deliciously light butter pastry in the shape of the Islamic crescent moon, pastries that today we still call croissants.”
― Robert Goodwin, Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682