The Spanish Armada and Drake in English and Spanish Literatures

Spain’s decadence and England’s rise to power is commonly believed to be the result of the uncontested victory of the English navy over Philip II and the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s obsolete and slow Spanish Armada in 1588. Recurrent images of the Protestant God-sent winds and storms against England’s enemies, the genius of Queen Elizabeth I and the audacity of Sir Francis Drake, mythological gods for the English nation but piratical devils for the Spaniards, have contributed to a “Britannia rules the waves” mentality among the British. Writers, historians, politicians and artists have repeated these die-hard clichés at different times of Britain’s history depending on the specific political circumstances of the time. The list of contributors to the construction of the national English/British identity is long: William Cecil, David Hume, Oliver Pigg, Petruccio Ubaldini, John Strype, Lord Macaulay, Thomas Deloney, Edward Clarke, Thomas Lathbury, William Camden, James Anthony Froude, James Aitken Wylie, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Southey, Geoffrey Parker and Colin Smith, many editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, films, TV, the radio, the internet, the church pulpit…