, Chair of Early Modern History at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona and author of
La leyenda negra: historia y opinión (1992), argues that, whether Roca Barea likes it or not, it is not currently possible to find any European or American historian with scientific credentials who accepts the extremes of the so-called
Leyenda negra ("Black Legend"). This, according to Carcel, is precisely because the exaggerations of the Black Legend have already been thoroughly deconstructed by European and American hispanists such as
Elliott,
Parker,
Benassar or
Vincent. She received significant praise from Peruvian Nobel Prize Winner,
Mario Vargas Llosa, who considered
Imperiofobia a "book of rigorous scholarship" which is "combative, deep, controversial and reads without pause".
Criticism Historian Miguel Martínez, of the University of Chicago, finds fault with her presentation of empires as "victims" instead of aggressors. In his review of Roca's
Imperiofobia he states that while it is well-sourced it also contains key historical omissions and severe ideological bias. Martínez argues that Roca systematically omits relevant data contradicting her vision of the Spanish Empire, giving examples such as Roca Barea's comparison of a supposed lack of rebellions in the Spanish Americas with the
Sepoy Mutiny in British-ruled India when in reality there were dozens of rebellions against Spanish rule. He also highlights Roca Barea's dismissal of Spanish atrocities in the Americas, citing exceptionally well-documented practices such as amputation, burning and mass killings. He further criticises Roca Barea's refusal to engage with the role of England as an imperial power, arguing that "exploring anti-British propaganda would have rendered her dated vision of perfidious Albion as a machine of anti-Hispanic propaganda absurd". He also takes issue with various perceived inconsistencies between the way she applies her arguments to the history of Spain and to that of other countries. In his view "with numerous scraps of truth, Roca Barea weaves a monumental fallacy which is intellectually unsustainable and dangerous from an ethical and political point of view".
José Luis Villacañas authored
Imperiofilia y el populismo nacional-católico (Lengua de Trapo, 2019), as a refutation of
Imperiofobia. According to Villacañas,
Imperiofobia lacks intellectual rigour and is alien to the parametres of "historical and academic research", featuring a brand of "reactionary intellectual populism". Villacañas considers the underlying interest in the work of Barea to be the underpinning of an ancient metaphysical struggle between
Catholicism (identified by Barea with "Spain") and
protestantism (with Barea adopting an
anglophobic,
germanophobic,
dutchphobic vision of history, albeit, rooted in an innovative vision of "
Hispanidad", rather than the historically more common
Anti-US sentiment). Luis Castellvi Laukamp accuses Roca Barea of "transforming the
Black Legend into the
White Legend" in the book
Imperofobia y Leyenda Negra. Regarding
Fracasología,
José-Carlos Mainer considers the Roca Barea's work to be blind to the wholesale reanalysis of the literary historiography dealing with the century of
Enlightenment that has taken place in the last six decades, as Roca Barea does "not give a damn about all that historians and philologists have written about the 18th-century in Spain". When it comes to literary style, Mainer describes the prose in
Fracasología as "capricious and impulsive", sprinkled with an "abundant" yet "arbitrary" bibliography with a number of mistakes. == Political positions ==