Spanish Empire
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50 free Spanish Empire trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
At its height Spain's empire reached from the Caribbean to Asia, and its colonies in the Americas lasted for more than three centuries. The way it was won, run and lost still shapes the map, the languages and the cities of two continents. This quiz covers the whole story: the first Atlantic voyages, the conquistadors and the Indigenous empires they toppled, the viceroyalties and treasure fleets, the missions of the northern frontier, and the independence wars that broke Spanish rule. It suits students revising colonial Latin America, pub quiz regulars, and anyone curious about how one kingdom came to rule so much of the world. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1494 treaty split the newly discovered world between Spain and Portugal?
Tordesillas
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.
Q 02Which Asian archipelago did Spain rule for over 300 years before ceding it to the United States in 1898?
The Philippines
The Philippines takes its name from Philip II of Spain. The explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the islands in his honour in 1543.
Q 03Which conquistador defied the governor of Cuba to lead the expedition that toppled the Aztec Empire?
Hernán Cortés
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.
Q 04Which city, founded by Spain in 1565, is the oldest continuously inhabited European town in the mainland US?
St. Augustine
St. Augustine was founded on September 8, 1565 by the Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who became the region's first governor.
Q 05Which Inca citadel, abandoned around the time of the Spanish conquest, was brought to world attention in 1911?
Machu Picchu
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.
Q 06By what nickname, a favourite of pirate tales, was the Spanish silver dollar known around the world?
Pieces of eight
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.
Q 07Which animal, long extinct in North America, returned on Spanish ships and transformed life on the Great Plains?
The horse
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.
Q 08Which Arizona landmark did scouts from Coronado's expedition become the first Europeans to see in 1540?
Grand Canyon
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.
Q 09Which Venezuelan general, hailed as The Liberator, led much of South America to independence from Spain?
Simón Bolívar
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.
Q 10Which Texas landmark began life as San Antonio de Valero, a Spanish mission built to convert local peoples?
The Alamo
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.
Q 11Which queen of Castile, wife of Ferdinand of Aragon, financed the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus?
Isabella I
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.
Q 12Which flagship of the first voyage of Columbus ran aground off Hispaniola in 1492 and was stripped for timber?
Santa María
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.
Q 13In which present-day island country did Columbus make his first landfall in the Americas in October 1492?
The Bahamas
Q 21Which South American capital, founded as the City of the Kings, was the seat of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru?
Lima
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.
Q 22Which viceroyalty, created in 1535 and governed from Mexico City, was first headed by Antonio de Mendoza?
New Spain
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.
Q 23Which port on the Río de la Plata estuary became the capital of a new Spanish viceroyalty in 1776?
Buenos Aires
The Bahamas holds the island he named San Salvador, known to its own people as Guanahani. Exactly which island it was is still debated.
Q 14Which city founded by Bartholomew Columbus is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the Americas?
Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo is home to the first university, cathedral, castle, monastery and fortress built in the New World.
Q 15Which Caribbean people, the first to meet Columbus in 1492, furnished their homes with cotton hammocks?
The Taíno
The Taíno also travelled in dugout canoes they called kanoa, the largest of which could carry as many as 150 people.
Q 16Which Aztec capital, built on an island in Lake Texcoco, lies beneath the historic centre of Mexico City?
Tenochtitlan
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.
Q 17Which Nahua woman, one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519, became their interpreter?
La Malinche
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.
Q 18Which Old World disease, first recorded in the Americas in 1518, devastated the Aztec capital two years later?
Smallpox
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.
Q 19Which Nahua state, a long-time enemy of the Aztecs, supplied a large force of warriors to the Spanish-led army?
Tlaxcala
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.
Q 20Which Inca emperor, captured by Pizarro at Cajamarca in 1532, paid a vast ransom in gold but was killed anyway?
Atahualpa
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.
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.
Q 24Which explorer crossed Panama in 1513 and became the first European to see the Pacific from the Americas?
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
Vasco Núñez de Balboa knew the water he had found as the South Sea, the name used at the time for the Pacific Ocean.
Q 25Which explorer led the Spanish expedition of 1519 to the East Indies but was killed before it circled the globe?
Ferdinand Magellan
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.
Q 26Which Basque navigator brought the ship Victoria home in 1522, completing the first voyage around the world?
Juan Sebastián Elcano
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.
Q 27Which Mexican port was the American end of the galleon route that traded New World silver for Chinese silk?
Acapulco
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.
Q 28Which US state did Juan Ponce de León name in 1513 after the Spanish term for the Easter season?
Florida
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.
Q 29Which city, founded in 1610 as capital of Spanish Nuevo México, is the oldest state capital in the US?
Santa Fe
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.
Q 30Which river was Hernando de Soto the first European documented to cross, a year before dying on its banks?
The Mississippi
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.