Verdades a medias, mentiras completas: el juego de espejos de la historia

This paper analyzes the political and ideological instrumentalization of history, using the narratives of the black legend and the white legend in the Spanish case as a central axis. Through an epistemological approach, it argues that history, as a scientific discipline, is grounded in the historical method, which enables the construction of objective knowledge as opposed to the subjectivity of opinion or biased memory. The text warns against the risks of reducing the past to moral dichotomies (good/evil) and using it as a tool to justify collective identities or present-day agendas. Finally, it posits that only a critical history, free from anachronistic judgments and committed to the complexity of historical processes, can overcome these distortions and and fulfill the commitment to truth aimed at understanding the past.