Figure 5.17 La Leyenda Negra. Illustrations such as this gruesome depiction of Spanish conquistadores hanging and roasting indigenous people, while throwing their babies against a wall, were used to construct La Leyenda Negra, or “The Black Legend.” La Leyenda Negra was circulated in the sixteenth century by the Dutch and the British, Spain’s religious and colonial rivals. They wished to depict the Spaniards as cruel barbarians who had no moral business building empires in the New World. (akg-images.)