When Louis XIV accepted the offer of the last Hapsburg King of Spain to bequeath his crown to a grandson to the Grand Monarque, a Spanish ambassador at Versailles exclaimed joyfully, “Now there are no more Pyrenees!” But those gloomy masses stood their ground as an obstinate barrier to French lumières, and as a symbol of the resistance that would meet the attempt of a dedicated few to Europeanize the Spanish mind.
—Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization1