great unchecked power given to inquisitors meant that they were "widely seen as above the law" and sometimes had motives for imprisoning and sometimes executing alleged offenders other than for the purpose of punishing religious nonconformity, mainly in Hispanoamerica and Iberoamerica.Archivo General de las Indias, Seville, Santa Fe 228, Expediente 63 Green quotes a complaint by historian Manuel Barrios about one Inquisitor, Diego Rodriguez Lucero, who in Cordoba in 1506 burned to death the husbands of two different women he then kept as mistresses. According to Barrios the daughter of Diego Celemin was exceptionally beautiful, her parents and her husband did not want to give her to [Lucero], and so Lucero had the three of them burnt and now has a child by her, and he has kept for a long time in the alcazar as a mistress. Defenders of the Inquisition discrediting with Green are many and seem to be the growing trend in current scholarship. These authors do not necessarily deny the abuses of power but classify them as politically instigated and comparable to those of any other law enforcement body of the period. Criticisms, usually indirect, have gone from the suspiciously sexual overtones or similarities of these accounts with unrelated older antisemitic accounts of kidnap and torture, to the clear proofs of control that the king had over the institution, to the sources used by Green, or just by reaching completely different conclusions.Juan Antonio Llorente: Historia crítica de la Inquisición en España (tomo IV, p. 183). Madrid: Hiperión, 1980. The context of Hispano America, that Green refers to often, was different from the Iberian context studied for many of those authors, due to the distance from the immediate executive power of the King, and deserves to be examined separately. Among those who do, there are also discrediting voices regarding the nature and extent of the Inquisition's abuses. Long-term economic effects According to a 2021 study, "municipalities of Spain with a history of a stronger inquisitorial presence show lower economic performance, educational attainment, and trust today." Historiography How historians and commentators have viewed the Spanish Inquisition has changed over time and continues to be a source of controversy. Before and during the 19th-century historical interest focused on who was being persecuted. In the early and mid 20th century, historians examined the specifics of what happened and how it influenced Spanish history. In the later 20th and 21st century,