The meeting, organized by the Florida Humanities Council (http://www.flahum.org/), was held on Oct. 30 at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and featured the España-Florida Foundation 500 Years, as special guest.

Prior to the start of the panel discussions, Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning; Eric Graham, special representative of the Governor’s Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development; and Emilio C. Sánchez, president of the España-Florida Foundation 500 Years, expressed support for the commemorative activities and stressed their importance for both Florida and Spain.

The FHC has received a $250,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to design, organize and implement activities to mark the fifth centenary of the arrival of Ponce de León and highlight the importance of Spain’s legacy in Florida over the past 500 years.

The meeting served as an initial chance to exchange ideas and establish a system for coordinating the activities to be organized by different institutions and entities.

Browning, Graham and the historians all emphasized the extraordinary opportunity the fifth centenary offers to explain the significance of Florida’s Spanish legacy.

Acclaimed historian Michael Gannon highlighted the importance of the Spanish colonial period and the need to broaden current research in that field to collate all of the various bibliographic and documentary sources, both in Spanish and English.

Among the views expressed in their panel discussions, the historians expressed the need to:

- Call on the state government and educational authorities to adapt Florida history books to include the Spanish colonial period. The historians said more appropriate and rigorous textbooks are required.

- Capitalize on the 500th anniversary commemorative activities to truly reach out to the public at large.

- Promote history in imaginative ways with recreational and tourism activities.

- Reform syllabuses throughout the state to place much greater emphasis on Florida history.

- Promote efforts to digitize historical documents.

- Establish greater coordination with research centers in Spain, as well as with Spain’s Historical Archives to facilitate access to key documents.

- Encourage students to become involved in historical research.

- It was also recommended that there be further debate on the name of the initiative, with the scholars proposing that it be titled “Florida 1513.”

- The historians highlighted the chance the 500th anniversary offers to respond to questions and clarify doubts surrounding the Spanish colonial period, saying that the state of Florida has been conspicuously passive in this regard.

- They also said this is an appropriate time to change and correct the perception and image that is commonly held of the “conquistadors.”

- Spanish historian Alberto Prieto Calixto suggested in that sense that the fifth centenary is an opportunity to change the erroneous image of the Spanish and restore their dignity. The use of terminology is essential: conquistador (Spanish) vs. settler (English); cruelty, greed, zealousness vs. integration, freedom & tolerance. Or the idealization of Caribbean pirates, as opposed to the negative portrayal of colonial Spain.

The 30 participating historians – each of them among the foremost experts in Florida’s Spanish colonial period – were divided into three panels:

COLONIAL SPANISH FLORIDA: Michael Francis; Michael Gannon; Susan Parker; John Bratten; James Cusick.

THE SPANISH LEGACY IN RACE, GENDER, RELIGION AND IDENTITY ISSUES IN FLORIDA: Jane Landers; Sherry Johnson; Zion Zohar; Andrew Frank; Wes Singletary

THE SPANISH LEGACY IN FLORIDA’S LITERATURE, ART, ARCHITECTURE, MUSIC AND FOOD: Maurice O’Sullivan; Alberto Prieto-Calixto; Efraín Barradas; Herschel Shepard; Jose Fernández, Thomas Hallock; Gary Mormino, Herb Hiller

IMMIGRATION: JC Espinosa; Paul Dosal; Luis Martinez-Fernández; Lisandro
Pérez; Alex Stepick

El total de participantes fue:

Kurt Browning, Florida’s Secretary of State; Emilio Sánchez,
España-Florida Foundation 500yrs; Eric Graham, Governor’s Office of
Tourism, Trade, and Economic Development; Michael Gannon, Professor
Emeritus of History, University of Florida; Paul Dosal, Professor of
History, University of South Florida; Jane Landers, Professor of History,
Vanderbilt University; James Cusick, Curator, PK Yonge Library of Florida
History, University of Florida; Michael  Francis, Professor of History,
UNF; Maurice O'Sullivan, Professor of English, Rollins College; Gary
Mormino, Professor of History, USF St. Petersburg; Susan Parker, Executive
Director,  St. Augustine Historical Society; Dana Ste. Claire, Director St.
Augustine Department of Heritage Tourism; Executive Director, St. Augustine
450th Commemoration; John Bratten, Professor of Anthropology, University of
West Florida; Luis Martínez-Fernández, Professor of History, University
of Central Florida; Lisandro Pérez, Professor of Anthropology and
Sociology, Florida International University; Andrew Frank, Professor of
History, Florida State University; Herb Hiller, Strategic Planner; Alex
Stepick, Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, Florida International
University; Alberto Prieto-Calixto, Professor of Literature,