Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
A scarlet door stands proud atop the sea. Through her lies a city. Through the city lies an island. Through the island lies a new world. Chiseled in stone on her mantel the door reverently proclaims: "BENEDICTVS QVI VENIT IN NOMINE DOMINI", "Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord".
The city is that of San Juan, and the island Puerto Rico. While her significance may now have waned, for centuries the island prospered from the fortuity of her geographic position en route between Europe and America. In the age of sail most captains would take a route from Europe south in order to take advantage of the so-named "Trade Winds" that dependably blow westwards across the Atlantic from Africa to the Caribbean. This journey was a long one, and upon arriving in the Caribbean ships would be in need of supplies: most of all fresh water. The small islands of the Lesser Antilles provided little haven, and so the first port of call soon became the island of Puerto Rico, owing to its abundance of flowing freshwater rivers. Naturally this geography did the island well, and as the Spanish expanded their horizons westward, it soon becoming the nexus for their trade and conquest. Thus she was named "Puerto Rico": "the Rich Port", as the untold riches of New World silver and gold flowed into her dockyards. In this article I want to delve into the imposing position the island had in the story of the New World.
On the 2nd of January, 1492 Spanish soldiers bearing the sign of the cross and under the banner of the Pope spilled into the hanging gardens of the Alhambra in Granada, the final bastion of Muslim rule in Western Europe. The opulence of the Sultan's harem was plundered and carted off to the dual monarchs of the recently united Spanish Kingdom of Aragon & Castile: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. They hailed victory and the conclusion of the "Reconguista", a conflict spanning centuries which saw the slow retaking of Spain from the Saracens in the name of Christ. These newly unemployed armies of Spain were experienced, well-armed and full of a holy fervour for war which the new kingdom would find difficult to convert into a holy fervour for farmwork. Leading one such a battallion of these victorious "reconquistadors" was the Marquess Juan Ponce of Leon, the future founder of the city of San Juan. The twin-monarchs wasted little time in putting the Sultan's wealth to good use rebuilding and reintegrating their new territory. But their most famous and impactful investment would be the financing of the eccentric and intelligent navigator "Christopher Columbus" in his fanciful whims to discover new trade routes to the Indes.
Columbus is an enigmatic figure, little is known about his life despite his enormous and lasting fame being still celebrated across the Americas. And while his name may have been besmirched in the Anglophone West in recent decades, he still very much retains his place amongst the Spanish speaking world as the founder of the New World: a hero glorious and good. What we do know about him personally paints a picture of a man so highly driven that many called him mad. A man who boasted an unorthodox yet devoutly Roman religion. A man whose very christening preceded his life deeds. His given name "Christopher" derives from St Christopher, and is a name constructed from the Greek "Christos Phoros": "The Christ Bearer". His surname, if that is indeed what it is, "Columbus" is in turn Latin for "dove". "The Dove who carries Christ". And just as St Christopher carried the child-Christ across the river, Columbus brought the church across the Atlantic, bringing the gospel to what are now the most Christian two continents on Earth.
It was only seven months after the fall of the Alhambra that Columbus first set sail for the ocean blue, discovering the Americas and thus changing the world forever. It wasn't until his second voyage that he first made footfall in Puerto Rico, confusingly christening the island "San Juan" after St John the Baptist, a name which would later come to encompass only her primary city rather than the island itself. With him he brought the aforementioned nobleman-cum-conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon. The fleet left without much fanfare, but two decades later Ponce would return. Now in command of his own exploratory fleet, he would formally found the colony of San Juan at the mouth of a large deepwater bay, so large in fact that it could comfortably house a large portion of the Spanish treasure fleet. Ponce was, remember, a veteran of the Reconguista, and brought that expertise to bear on the Caribbean basin. One of the most successful early conquistadors he set up Spanish outposts along many Caribbean islands and the coast of the Florida peninsula. But San Juan remained the pearl of his progeny, growing into the centre of the New World economy. But for him, like most of the conquistadors, more important than his conquests material were his conquests spiritual: the expansion of Christendom and the continuation of the crusade he started against the Sultan of Granada. Soon through Ponce's efforts and the efforts of many other individuals, states and peoples an entire hemisphere was settled. The dove of Christ set to roost across the whole of the New World: a promised land. But to enter the promised land you had first to enter through that scarlet gate: "Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord".
