 In the years following his death, his ideas became taboo in the Spanish realm, and he was seen as a nearly heretical extremist.The accounts written by his enemies Lopez de Gómara and Oviedo were widely read and published.As the British Empire rose to power and hostilities between the British and Spanish began, the British used Las Casas's accounts of Spanish cruelty as a political tool, as part of the foundation of what Spanish nationalists have called the Black Legend, the tendency of historians to slander Spain for its imperial past but to look mildly at the same undertakings by others such as the British.