Carlos I, Reforma and Inquisition in the Canary Islands

Abstract

It is very likely that the Canary Islands is the first place in Spain where Protestantism arrived and settled. Trade with the islands and their strategic position as a place of passage for navigation contributed greatly to this. The first inquisitorial processes against Protestants also took place in the Canary Islands from the twenties of the sixteenth century, although the activity of the Holy Office was not as intense with Charles I as with Philip II later. The Canaries did not always cooperate with the Inquisition, there were cases in which the support and protection of the Protestants was of such complicity that some islanders ended up being condemned for crimes against the Holy Office. The evaluation of the Inquisition has not been uniform, some important 19th-century Canarian historian, along with many other current ones, considers that it was an execrable institution provoking many evils, while other contemporary authors understand its behavior and minimize its consequences.