Television Series Reviews 349 Isabel on TV: Politics Past and Present Starting in September 2012, Spanish national television (TVE) broadcast a highly successful and critically acclaimed historical series about Queen Isabel I of Castile (1474–1504).1 The first episode of Isabel opens with a rapidly edited sequence of momentous events taking place over three days in 1474. First we witness the death throes of King Enrique IV (1454–74) on December 11, 1474, in Madrid. The scene then abruptly shifts to Segovia, where Princess Isabel, Enrique’s half-sister and disputed succes- sor to his throne, is consulting with her close advisers Andrés Cabrera and Gonzalo Chacón. They inform her that a junta has been called to decide the legitimate heir to the Castilian throne, whether Enrique’s daughter Juana of Castile (1462–1500) or Isabel. Cabrera advises her to be patient and wait for the results. But Isabel is having none of it. “I’ve had enough patience [bastante paciencia he tenido],” she declares. We next find ourselves in the shadowy nave of the church of San Miguel in Segovia. The twenty-three-year-old Isabel stands in the center of the church surrounded by city officials. She is swathed in a long black cape, presumably in mourning for Enrique. Rodrigo de Ulloa, the treasurer of Castile, and Garci Franco, a member of the royal council, swear as eye- witnesses that the king died without naming his successor. What follows is both dramatic and visually arresting. Isabel walks slowly out of the church, her cape trailing behind her. She pauses at the top of the steps outside and calmly surveys the assembled townspeople. 1 Isabel ran from September 7 to December 3, 2012, and averaged between 3.5 and 4.6 million viewers per episode. All thirteen episodes are archived on TVE’s web- site: http://www.rtve.es/television/isabel-la-catolica/la-serie/, Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española, accessed April 30, 2013, along with full information about the filming and the actors as well as interviews with director Jordi Frades, scriptwriter Javier Olivares, and historical adviser Teresa Cunillera. An application for mobile devices or computers provides a “second screen” with additional historical information and displays Twitter comments from viewers: http://www.rtve.es/television/isabel-la-catolica/masi- sabel/, Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española, accessed April 30, 2013. In 2013, the coveted Premio Iris of the National Academy of Television was awarded to Isabel the series, its director Jordi Frades, Michelle Jenner for her role as Isabel and Rodolfo Sánchez for his role as Fernando, and for best Art Direction. 350 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Television Series Reviews A close-up then shows her removing the black cape to uncover a dazzling white gown that glitters in the sun. The crowd gasps. Isabel then takes a simple gold crown and places it on her head. She asks Cabrera, governor of the Segovia palace, to precede her down the steps holding a sword upright by its point, a symbol of royal justice. With her childhood tutor and most trusted adviser Chacón by her side, she descends the steps. Her new sub- jects shout, “Long live the queen [Viva la reina]!” This very same scene is repeated at the end of the series’ final episode. It can rightly be considered its signature image: the flinging down of the black cape to reveal a white gown symbolizing the movement from death to life, from struggle to triumph, from beleaguered princess to powerful queen, from male to female rule. The thirteen episodes between these repeated scenes give viewers a detailed flashback of the fraught dozen years between 1462 and 1474, when it was not at all certain that Isabel would become monarch of Castile. Instead, those years saw a bitter and at times bloody struggle for the throne. The problem with Isabel’s costume change at her self-proclamation, at least for those expecting veracity in a historical series, is that it never happened. It was invented whole cloth by one of Isabel’s official chroni- clers, the highly imaginative and partisan Alfonso de Palencia. Palencia neither witnessed the momentous event, since he was at the time accompa- nying Isabel’s husband Fernando on a journey to Aragón, nor did he fully support Isabel, deploring, for example, her unprecedented appropriation of the sword of justice.2 Nevertheless, it is Palencia’s version of events that has dominated Isabelline historiography until quite recently. His version of the contest for the crown of Castile is best summarized by the enduring sexual slurs of “the Impotent [el Impotente]” applied to Enrique and “la Beltraneja” attached to Enrique’s daughter, Juana of Castile. Linked togeth- er, they construct her as illegitimate, the offspring of an affair between the king’s wife and the king’s favorite and reputed lover, Beltrán de la Cueva. It is only in the last two decades, particularly since the quincentenary of 2 For more on Palencia’s stigmatization of Enrique as effeminate and Isabel as masculine, see Chapter 3 of my Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Television Series Reviews 351 Isabel’s death in 2004, that scholars have begun to take a more critical view of this tenacious official story. Quite simply, the charges against Enrique and his rightful heir were part of a smear campaign waged by Isabel’s sup- porters. There is no credible evidence that Enrique was impotent or that Juana was illegitimate. Historian Ana Isabel Carrasco Manchado’s 2006 book on Isabel and her illegitimate claim to the throne is a good example of the new Isabelline historiography.3 She begins by citing the most reliable documentation of the 1474 event, written by Pedro García de la Torre, scribe of the Segovia city council, who asserts that the ceremony had none of the pomp and circumstance conveyed by Palencia. There was simply not enough time, as the event occurred a mere two days after Enrique’s death and bypassed the customary funerary rites for the deceased monarch. However, the scribe records the crucial testimony by Ulloa and Franco that on his deathbed Enrique did not name a successor. Thus, in its first few minutes, Isabel the series weaves together his- torical fact and fantasy, and it continues to do so throughout. The series scriptwriter Javier Olivares gives an ironic meta-historical nod to the dif- ficulty of sorting out truth from falsity in the story of Isabel’s rise to power. Starting in Episode 9, Alfonso de Palencia himself appears frequently, quill in hand, recording some events as they happened and making others up. Several characters ask him to omit a particular detail that casts them in a negative light, or add one that favors them, acknowledging that it is not what historical figures do that is important, but how historians (and now film and television directors) represent those actions. As Fernando says to Palencia in Episode 11, “What’s left finally is what you chroniclers write down [lo que queda finalmente es lo que vosotros escribís].” It is not my intention in this brief essay to point out each instance of deviation from or fidelity to historical fact in Isabel. I wish to focus instead on the series’ negotiation of the gap between the medieval and the modern, between history and popular culture. That gap was inadvertently addressed in comments made by the primary creators of the show, its director Jordi 3 Ana Isabel Carrasco Manchado, Isabel I de Castilla y la sombra de la ilegitimidad: Propaganda y representación en el conflicto sucesorio (1474–1482) (Madrid: Sílex, 2006). 352 EMWJ 2013, vol. 8 Television Series Reviews Frades and scriptwriter Olivares. Frades’s goal in dramatizing Isabel’s life between 1462 and 1474 was to “seek its intimacy . [and] personal moti- vation . [in] the most emotional space possible” [buscarle la intimidad . (y) motivación personal . (en) la zona lo más emocional posible].” Olivares instead maintained that Isabel was not a melodrama but a histori- cal series (“no es un folletín, es una serie histórica”). The reality lies some- where in between. To arrive at that middle ground, I concentrate mainly on the characterization of several key figures as well as those aspects clearly aimed at a wide audience likely unfamiliar with late medieval Spanish his- tory. Finally, I speculate on the contemporary political motives for Spanish national television’s production of the series. Part of the success of Isabel was no doubt due to its very attractive and accomplished cast. Most notable, of course, are the protagonists: Michelle Jenner, the blue-eyed, blonde beauty who plays Isabel, and Rodolfo Sancho, the handsome and strapping actor who plays her husband Fernando II, heir to the kingdom of Aragón whom she wed in 1469. Jenner’s award-winning portrayal of Isabel conforms closely to the dominant historiography given initial shape by the queen’s own court chroniclers Enríquez del Castillo, Hernando del Pulgar, Diego de Valera, Juan de Flores, and, to a lesser extent, Palencia. From the very beginning of the twelve years portrayed, and despite constant attempts by both allies and opponents to manipulate her for their own gain, she remains the self-contained, modest, pious, and resolute young woman idealized over the last five hundred years. It is no doubt in the interests of that characterization that in the first few episodes the princess appears to be much older than eleven. That was Isabel’s age in 1462, when Enrique’s heir Juana was born and when he ordered Isabel and her brother Alfonso brought to court from a secluded life at their mother’s side in provincial Arévalo to keep an eye on them.