As they move among the remnants of Valladolid's former royal splendor, tourists can consider how Spain might have developed had the Counter-Reformation not been so successful in suppressing the nascent Protestant heresy--or what might have happened had there been more men like Salcedo.
The prohibition of imagery (Iconoclasm) by the Eastern Church in the eighth and ninth centuries (and, after the Reformation, by Protestant sects) was a reaction against the widespread heresy of "real presence" the belief that the image of God or of Christ had itself an aspect of divinity.
Salcedo's entry into heresy and its rarefied society--the rich had access to books and travel to the Protestant north--hinges on what most would consider obscure doctrinal points, such as whether one is saved by faith alone or by grace and good works.