) was a Spanish historian and member of the Academia de la Historia of Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

. He lived in Cadiz and died there in 1898.

Castro wrote the first short history of the Jews in Spain, based on careful studies. His history was so impartial and dispassionate that he found it necessary to assure his readers (p. 8): "Escribo esta historia sin pasion, ni artificio, como de cosas que nada me tocán. Ni soi judio, ni vengo de judaizantes" (I write this history dispassionately and without craft, as concerning things that do not touch me. I am not a Jew, nor am I of Jewish descent.) Castro's book was published under the title, Historia de los Judios en España, desde los Tiempos de su Establecimiento hasta Principios del Presente Siglo, Cádiz, 1847. It was translated into English by Rev. Edward D.G.M. Kirwan, Cambridge, John Deighton, 1851.

Unlike José Amador de los Ríos

José Amador de los Ríos

José Amador de los Ríos y Serrano was a Spanish intellectual, primarily a historian and archaeologist of art and literature. He was a graduate in history of the Complutense University of Madrid....

, who, after him, treated the history of the Jews in Spain, Castro condemned the Inquisition

Inquisition

The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...

: "Pues los monarcas bien podran regir con las leyes de la fuerza los cuerpos de sus vasallos; pero no podrán sujetar los animos" (For monarchs can indeed command by forcible laws the bodies of their subjects, but cannot subdue their souls).
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