News reports today say top U.S. officials who pushed waterboarding as an interrogation method didn’t understand its historical origins, including its use in the Spanish Inquisition. Deep delving shows the technique was so widespread in 16th and 17th Century Spain, it made it into the popular slang of the period and shows up in its most iconic literary works.

These references allow us even more insight into the method used 266 times on two suspected Al Qaeda members and which former Vice President Dick Cheney considers responsible for some success stories in the fight against terrorism. Attorney General Eric Holder, however, considers waterboarding “unjustifiable.”

During the inquisition, the waterboarding technique was known as “la toca” because a toca is a rag, and part of the procedure was to wrap a rag or handkerchief over the inmate’s mouth and nose, before pouring water through it from a jar. The rag, soaked in water, would dip into the subject’s mouth and nostrils, making breathing difficult, so difficult that a constant sensation of drowning was the result. La toca was used to force confessions from Jews, Muslims, Protestants, heretics, witches, and other targets of the inquisition, but also ordinary criminals. Variations included tilting the subject (lashed to a board) so that his feet are above head-level, putting gravity on the torturer’s side. Some inquisitors also used filthy water. Others would rip the toca off suddenly. The gasping that resulted was painful, and often extreme enough to strain or rip the prisoner’s diaphragm.

In Chapter XII of Don Quixote (the classic Spanish novel first published in 1605 by Miguel de Cervantes), a reference shows just how far the water torture technique had penetrated into the popular imagination. Near the novel’s beginning, Don Quixote meets a chain-gang making its way across the Spanish countryside. One of the convicts refers to “cantar en el ansia,” a bit of underworld slang the clueless Don Quixote doesn’t understand.

Another prisoner explains: “Sir knight, cantar en el ansia, among these unsaintly people, refers to a confession extracted by torment. They tortured this sinner and he confessed his crime, which was thieving cattle and horses, and having his confession, they convicted him to six years of forced rowing in Spanish galleys, in addition to the two hundred whiplashes he already carries on his back.”

A footnote in my Spanish version of the novel says “ansia” was underworld slang for water. In other words, the cattle thief had “sung in the water”: he had confessed his crime with a rag wrapped around his face, gasping as water pressed the soaked cloth to his mouth and nose.

It should be noted that “ansia” can be translated as anxiety or extreme discomfort in Spanish. In other words, the practice of water torture was so widespread, members of the criminal underground had nicknamed water for its effect on them when wielded by zealous law authorities.

In another famous novel by Cervantes (who spent time in prison so presumably knew what he was talking about), Rinconete y Cortadillo, a livestock thief suffers the “ansia” three times, but in this case without singing. He must have been a hard case. Descriptions of Spanish waterboarding are chilling. This one’s from the 1913 book Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition: A History:

The mouth of the patient was now distended and held so by a prong of iron called a bostezo. His nostrils were plugged, and a long strip of linen was placed across his jaws, and carried deep into his throat by the weight of water poured into his gaping mouth. Down this toca as the strip was called water continued to be slowly poured. As this water filtered through the cloth, the patient was subjected to all the torments of suffocation, the more cruel because he was driven by his instincts to make futile efforts to ease his condition. He would constantly exert himself to swallow the water, hoping thus to clear the way for a little air to pass into his bursting lungs. A little would and did pass in just enough to keep him alive and conscious, but not enough to mitigate the horrible sufferings of asphyxiation, for the cloth was always wet and constantly charged with water.

Interestingly, one of the White House lawyers who signed off on the now-notorious interrogation memos, Steven G. Bradbury, cited the Spanish Inquisition’s use of waterboarding in congressional testimony in February. He tried to make the case that U.S. waterboarding was less harsh than the Spanish version because no water was allowed to enter the lungs of prisoners subjected to the practice. U.S. interrogators covered the prisoner’s mouth with cloth or cellophane, he claimed. It’s hard to understand how cloth would prevent water from being ingested by the inmate. Cellophane would clearly stop water, but also prevent the prisoner from breathing at all. Eventually, the truth or something approximating the truth, in full-color detail, will come out about the U.S. and waterboarding. Until it does, it’s cold comfort to know Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada signed off on the same practice.

Even as details continue to emerge, waterboarding has made a huge impression on the Spanish-speaking world. In Latin America, where torture until very recently was commonly practiced by dictatorships, it has been cited in thousands of news reports, serving as fodder for those critical of U.S. foreign policy. Below is an image from the March 3 edition of Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba’s Communist Party.