Day 2 3/7

 Today was our second day in Spain, and today we started our day off around 10:00 in Plaza Mayor with a Spanish Inquisition walking tour with our amazing tour guide, Jovan! The tour started off talking about the various marginalized groups in Spanish history. Our first stop on the tour was at the Jewish Museum, where we learned that one of the first groups targeted was the Jewish. They were targeted because at the time they were only a small population in Spain (150,000) and because they did not practice religion "the right way,”  not the Roman Catholic way. They were given the option to self-deport and leave all of their valuables (they were known for collecting silverware, etc.) or to convert to Roman Catholic. It ended up being a 50/50 split between self-deporting and converting. Many of those who converted still practiced Judaism in secret. 

Our next stop was San Nicolás de los Servitas, or the Church of Saint Nicholas. This is the oldest church in Madrid and the 6th oldest in Spain, being built in 1099. It is now being used by the Third Order of the Servitas.

The next stop was the Tribunal de la Inquisición. Back in the day, if you found yourself here, you were in a lot of trouble. The main crime that would find you here would be for practicing a religion that was not Roman Catholic. It is told that they had an 82-page book on torture! They also had a few rules for torture: there could be no blood shed, you could only be tortured for 15 minutes at a time, and there could be no more than 3 sessions. There is no set number on the amount of people killed from the Inquisition; the number is currently around 3000, but there are still well over 1 million pages of information from this time period that still need to be read and understood! 

Later in the day, a smaller group of us went to the famous Museo Nacional del Prado. We saw a lot of oil paintings from famous artists like Raphael, Mantegna, da Vinci, and many more! My favorite piece of art was the Mona Lisa still by da Vinci, but she had a different background. After the museum, the group went around Madrid to go shopping and look for gifts for our families and friends!

-Anthony, Rhylee, Becca & Dan