Luis de Santángel (d. 1498) was a prominent converso in Renaissance Spain who was instrumental in convincing Queen Isabella the Catholic to fund Christopher Columbus’s voyage. The voyage was the result of a juncture of decisive circumstances. The Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492, the same year in which La Reconquista took place, allowing Catholic Spain to establish itself as a nation around a single religion. And that was the year when Antonio de Nebrija, another converso, who taught at the University of Salamanca, published his Gramática de la Lengua Española, an effort to make Spanish the language of the newly created nation.
The life of Santángel has often been the stuff of fiction. He amassed considerable amounts of money. Silently, he might have persuaded the queen to support Columbus in an effort to find an alternative to the Jews escaping Spain. Eventually, after his four voyages, Columbus was granted the island of Jamaica, where a number of crypto-Jews are known to have settled. In that sense, he is a messianic figure. One of Santángel’s relatives was burnt at the stake. However, because of his relationship with King Ferdinand, he and his family were spared from persecution. There is a bust of Santángel in the Alameda of Valencia.
Little of the diet of Luis de Santángel is known. However, the chicken dish below is named in honour of him, as a sign of gratitude for his effort to open new doors in the Jewish diaspora. Why chicken in particular isn’t known either. Fowl was a fixture of European food, but not necessarily of Jewish cuisine. Quail, pheasant and partridge are common in the Spanish diet. Chicken and hen were favoured by the nobility. Ilan tried the Pollo Luis de Santángel at the home of a Lebanese Jewish family in Mexico City with whom he learnt Ladino in the early 1980s. This variation is likely a fusion produced by entrepreneurial immigrants. It includes annatto, a tropical orange-red condiment derived from the achiote tree that is believed to have originated in Mexico and Brazil. The flavour is sweet, peppery and nutty.
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