Literary hispanophobia and hispanophilia in Britain and the low countries (1550 1850) Spain has been a fruitful locus for the European imagination for centuries and it has been most often perceived in black and white oppositions either as a tyrannical and fanatical force in the early modern period or as an imaginary geography of a ‘Romantic’ Spain in later centuries. However the image of Spain its culture and its inhabitants did not evolve inexorably from negative to positive. From the early modern period onwards it responded to an ambiguous matrix of conflicting Hispanophobic and Hispanophilic representations. Just as in the nineteenth century latent negative stereotypes continued to resurface even in the Romantic heyday in the early modern period appreciation for Spain was equally undeniable. When Spain was a political and military superpower it also enjoyed cultural hegemony with a literary Golden Age producing internationally hailed masterpieces. Literary Hispanophobia and Hispanophilia in Britain and the Low Countries (1550 1850) explores the protracted interest in Spain and its culture and it exposes the co existent ambiguity between scorn and fascination that characterizes Western historical perceptions in particular in Britain and the Low Countries two geographical spaces with a shared sense of historical connectedness and an overlapping sometimes complicated history with Spain