"Philip II. had threatened with death and confiscation anyone who published foreign books or who circulated manuscripts, and his successors forbade any Spaniard to write on political subjects, so, finding no ways of expansion for thought, they devoted themselves to fine arts and poetry; painting and the theatre rose to a higher level than in any other country; they were the safety valves of the national genius; but this spring of art was only ephemeral, for in the midst of the seventeenth century a grotesque and debasing decadence overwhelmed everything.
"The poverty in those centuries was horrible; that same Philip II., though he was lord of the world, put up titles of nobility for sale for the sum of six thousand reals, noting on the margin of the decree 'that it was not necessary to inquire much into the quality and origin of the people.' In Madrid the people sacked the bakeries, fighting with their fists for the bread. The president of Castille travelled through the province with the executioner to wring the scanty harvest from the peasants. The collectors of taxes, finding nothing that they could collect in the towns, tore off the roofs of the houses, selling the woodwork and the tiles. The families fled to the mountains whenever they saw in the distance the king's representative, and so the towns remained deserted and fell into ruins. Hunger came in even to the royal palaces, and Charles II., Lord of Spain and of the Indies, was unable on several occasions to procure food for his servants. The ambassadors of England and Denmark were obliged to sally forth with their armed servants to seek for bread in the suburbs of Madrid.
"And amidst all this the innumerable convents, masters of more than half the country and the sole possessors of wealth, showed their charity by distributing soup to those who had strength to fetch it, and by founding asylums and hospitals, where the people died of misery though they were certain of reaching heaven. The ancient manufactures had all disappeared. Segovia, so famous for its cloth, that had employed over 40,000 persons in its manufacture, only held 15,000 inhabitants, and these had so completely forgotten the art of weaving wool that when Philip V. wished to re-establish the industry, he was obliged to import German weavers.