Historian Manuel Fernández Álvarez defined a black legend as:

... the careful distortion of the history of a nation, perpetrated by its enemies, in order to better fight it. And a distortion as monstrous as possible, with the goal of achieving a specific aim: the moral disqualification of the nation, whose supremacy must be fought in every way possible.

— as cited in Alfredo Alvar's book, La Leyenda Negra (1997:5)