50 Fun Facts About Spanish Empire

Which 1494 treaty split the newly discovered world between Spain and Portugal?

Tordesillas drew a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, handing Castile the lands beyond it. Portugal kept the east, which came to include the eastern part of Brazil.

Which Asian archipelago did Spain rule for over 300 years before ceding it to the United States in 1898?

The Philippines takes its name from Philip II of Spain. The explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the islands in his honour in 1543.

Which conquistador defied the governor of Cuba to lead the expedition that toppled the Aztec Empire?

Hernán Cortés ignored a last-minute order recalling his expedition. When the governor sent men to arrest him, he beat them in battle and added the survivors to his own force.

Which city, founded by Spain in 1565, is the oldest continuously inhabited European town in the mainland US?

St. Augustine was founded on September 8, 1565 by the Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who became the region's first governor.

Which Inca citadel, abandoned around the time of the Spanish conquest, was brought to world attention in 1911?

Machu Picchu was never truly lost. It was known locally, and the Peruvian explorer Agustín Lizárraga reached it before the American historian Hiram Bingham made it famous.

By what nickname, a favourite of pirate tales, was the Spanish silver dollar known around the world?

Pieces of eight were each worth eight reales, and they were trusted so widely that they stayed legal tender in the United States until 1857.

Which animal, long extinct in North America, returned on Spanish ships and transformed life on the Great Plains?

The horse came back in 1493 on the second voyage of Columbus. The wild mustangs of the American West descend from animals the conquistadors brought with them.

Which Arizona landmark did scouts from Coronado's expedition become the first Europeans to see in 1540?

The Grand Canyon was reached by Captain García López de Cárdenas and his Hopi guides, scouting for an expedition that had come north hunting the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola.

Which Venezuelan general, hailed as The Liberator, led much of South America to independence from Spain?

Simón Bolívar was first given the title by the citizens of the Venezuelan town of Mérida, and the nation of Bolivia is named after him.

Which Texas landmark began life as San Antonio de Valero, a Spanish mission built to convert local peoples?

The Alamo was one of the early Spanish missions in Texas. Its original name honoured both Saint Anthony of Padua and a viceroy, the Marquess of Valero.

Which queen of Castile, wife of Ferdinand of Aragon, financed the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus?

Isabella I backed the voyage in the same year that she and her husband completed the Reconquista, and her reign is counted as the start of Spain's overseas empire.

Which flagship of the first voyage of Columbus ran aground off Hispaniola in 1492 and was stripped for timber?

Santa María was beyond repair after hitting a sandbar or reef on the night of 24–25 December, so Columbus ordered his men to strip the timbers and sailed home on a smaller caravel.

In which present-day island country did Columbus make his first landfall in the Americas in October 1492?

The Bahamas holds the island he named San Salvador, known to its own people as Guanahani. Exactly which island it was is still debated.

Which city founded by Bartholomew Columbus is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the Americas?

Santo Domingo is home to the first university, cathedral, castle, monastery and fortress built in the New World.

Which Caribbean people, the first to meet Columbus in 1492, furnished their homes with cotton hammocks?

The Taíno also travelled in dugout canoes they called kanoa, the largest of which could carry as many as 150 people.

Which Aztec capital, built on an island in Lake Texcoco, lies beneath the historic centre of Mexico City?

Tenochtitlan shared its island with a twin city called Tlatelolco, and at the time of the Spanish conquest the two together made up Mexico City.

Which Nahua woman, one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519, became their interpreter?

La Malinche was handed over by the people of Tabasco. She had been sold or kidnapped into slavery as a child, probably between the ages of 8 and 12.

Which Old World disease, first recorded in the Americas in 1518, devastated the Aztec capital two years later?

Smallpox became the deadliest disease carried across the Atlantic. An estimated 40 percent of the 200,000 people in the Aztec capital died of it in 1520.

Which Nahua state, a long-time enemy of the Aztecs, supplied a large force of warriors to the Spanish-led army?

Tlaxcala had been at war with the Aztecs for so long that its people seized the chance to strike back, and they soon became loyal allies of the Spanish.

Which Inca emperor, captured by Pizarro at Cajamarca in 1532, paid a vast ransom in gold but was killed anyway?

Atahualpa handed over the ransom, but the Spanish then accused him of treason and of the murder of his rival Huáscar, and he was garroted in 1533.

Which South American capital, founded as the City of the Kings, was the seat of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru?

Lima was founded on 6 January 1535 and named in honour of the Epiphany. Francisco Pizarro chose the Rímac valley site after a failed first attempt at Jauja.

Which viceroyalty, created in 1535 and governed from Mexico City, was first headed by Antonio de Mendoza?

New Spain got a viceroy because the Crown wanted an aristocrat loyal to the monarch, not to the men who had done the conquering, in charge of Mexico.

Which port on the Río de la Plata estuary became the capital of a new Spanish viceroyalty in 1776?

Buenos Aires was by then a major centre of illegal trade, one reason the Crown carved the new viceroyalty out of lands that had been run from Peru.

Which explorer crossed Panama in 1513 and became the first European to see the Pacific from the Americas?

Vasco Núñez de Balboa knew the water he had found as the South Sea, the name used at the time for the Pacific Ocean.

Which explorer led the Spanish expedition of 1519 to the East Indies but was killed before it circled the globe?

Ferdinand Magellan was Portuguese, born into minor nobility, and had served as a naval officer for the Portuguese Crown in Asia before he sailed for Spain.

Which Basque navigator brought the ship Victoria home in 1522, completing the first voyage around the world?

Juan Sebastián Elcano took command for the return trip to Spain. The king later sent him on a second expedition to the Spice Islands, during which he died of scurvy in the Pacific.

Which Mexican port was the American end of the galleon route that traded New World silver for Chinese silk?

Acapulco saw only one or two galleons a year. Each left Manila around the start of July and spent at least four months crossing the northern Pacific.

Which US state did Juan Ponce de León name in 1513 after the Spanish term for the Easter season?

Florida comes from Pascua Florida, the Festival of Flowers, as Spaniards called Easter. Ponce de León sighted the coast on April 2, 1513 and came ashore the next day.

Which city, founded in 1610 as capital of Spanish Nuevo México, is the oldest state capital in the US?

Santa Fe is short for a far longer original name, which translates as the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Which river was Hernando de Soto the first European documented to cross, a year before dying on its banks?

The Mississippi lay on the route of the first European expedition deep into what is now the United States, which he led after helping to conquer the Inca Empire in Peru.

In which US state did Friar Junípero Serra direct a chain of Spanish missions that eventually numbered 21?

California's oldest European settlements grew up around or near the missions, among them San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose and San Francisco.

Which 1680 uprising, also called Popé's Rebellion, drove Spanish colonists out of New Mexico for twelve years?

The Pueblo Revolt united most of the Indigenous communities of the province, and its leader Popé came from the Tewa-speaking village of Ohkay Owingeh.

Which system rewarded Spain's conquistadors with the labour of conquered peoples in return for protection?

Encomienda literally means entrusting, but in practice the conditions it imposed closely resembled forced labour and outright slavery.

Which Dominican friar and first Protector of the Indians wrote A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies?

Bartolomé de las Casas first arrived in Hispaniola as a layman, and only later became a friar and the first resident Bishop of Chiapas.

Which Andalusian city was the first home of the House of Trade, set up in 1503 to control American commerce?

Seville kept the agency for more than two centuries, until it was transferred to Cádiz in 1717.

At which Caribbean port did Spain's treasure convoys from Veracruz and Portobelo meet before sailing home?

Havana had been sacked by French privateers, and that raid is what pushed Spain to organise its Atlantic shipping into guarded convoys in the 1560s.

Which Andean boomtown grew up beneath the Cerro Rico, a mountain popularly imagined to be made of silver ore?

Potosí owes its founding to an Indigenous prospector, Diego Huallpa, who is traditionally credited with discovering the mountain's riches in 1545.

Which English privateer attacked Cádiz in 1587, a raid that became known as the singeing of the King's beard?

Francis Drake found the harbour packed with ships and supplies being readied for the Armada, and his raid delayed the Spanish invasion by a year.

Which English monarch was the target of the Armada that Philip II of Spain launched in 1588?

Elizabeth I was to be overthrown by an invasion army ferried across from Flanders. Years earlier, a marriage between her and the Spanish king had been explored.

Which Habsburg ruler was both King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor when the Aztec and Inca empires fell?

Charles V borrowed heavily from German and Italian bankers and repaid them with the flow of silver from Mexico and Peru, which caused widespread inflation.

Which French ruler's invasion of Spain in 1808 emptied the throne and set off independence wars in the Americas?

Napoleon Bonaparte put his own family on the Spanish throne, and the juntas that sprang up in Spain to resist them were soon copied across the Atlantic.

Which Mexican priest launched the war of independence in 1810 with a speech known as the Cry of Dolores?

Miguel Hidalgo is honoured as the Father of the Nation, yet his speech called on the people to protect the interest of the captive Spanish king, Ferdinand VII.

Which Argentine general led an army across the Andes to free Chile, then served as Protector of Peru?

José de San Martín left South America at the age of seven to study in Málaga, and he did not sail back to join the fight until 1812.

Which Caribbean island, colonized by Juan Ponce de León in 1508, passed from Spain to the United States in 1898?

Puerto Rico was the name of the capital at first, meaning Rich Port City, while Columbus had called the island itself San Juan Bautista.

In Spanish America's casta hierarchy, which name was given to Spaniards born in the New World?

Criollos ranked near the top of colonial society but below European-born Spaniards, for whom the highest administrative and church posts were reserved.

Which Catholic order was expelled from the Spanish Empire in 1767, eight years after Portugal did the same?

The Jesuits had for over a century protected the Guaraní of Paraguay from enslavement by gathering them into mission towns known as reductions.

Which Indigenous leader took an Inca royal name and led a great Andean rebellion against Spanish rule in 1780?

Túpac Amaru II was born José Gabriel Condorcanqui, and he opened his revolt by executing a Spanish official who was accused of repeated abuses.

Which 1824 battle secured the independence of Peru and sealed the end of Spanish rule in South America?

Ayacucho ended with the Spanish viceroy wounded on the field and his second-in-command signing the final capitulation of the Royalist army.

Which Indigenous people of Chile resisted Spanish colonisers in the long-running Arauco War?

The Mapuche resisted so stubbornly that Chile was nicknamed the Indian Flanders, and the two sides ended up fixing a clear frontier between them.

Which outpost at the mouth of the Mediterranean did Spain cede to Britain under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht?

Gibraltar had been captured in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, and the treaty handed it to Britain in perpetuity.